paint [ME] Paint is from Old French peint ‘painted’, from Latin pingere ‘to paint’. To paint the town red dates from the late 19th century. It is first found in the USA which puts in doubt the story that it comes from an occasion in 1837 when Marquis of Waterford and some young friends ran riot in the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray and painted some of the buildings red. An alternative interpretation is that revellers were thought of as having such a wild time that they treated the entire town like a red light district. Paint yourself into a corner, from the image of someone painting a floor and forgetting to start near a doorway to avoid crossing the wet paint, arose in the 1950s. Painter [ME] goes back to Latin pictor which also gives us picturesque [E18th] the spelling changed to fit with *picture.