Toe the line scratch mark on the floor. One of the earliest references related to an English prize fight in 1840. Byan Shaw's painting "Toeing the Line", depicting a scene at Ascot, alludes to it being a term used in horse racing. "Toe the line" is often misspelled "tow the line", substituting a familiar verb "tow" for the homophonic but unfamiliar verbal use of "toe." "Tow" does not accord with any of the proposed etymologies, so "tow the line" is a linguistic eggcorn. Its modern-day use includes the context of partisan or factional politics, as in, "He's toeing the party line," the context
Variations on the name "Abegg" Variations on the name "Abegg" The Variations on the name "Abegg" in F major is a piece (theme with variations) for piano by Robert Schumann, composed between 1829 and 1830 and published as his Opus 1. The name is believed to refer to Schumann's fictitious friend, Meta Abegg, whose surname Schumann used through a musical cryptogram as the motivic basis for the piece. The name Meta is considered to be an anagram of the word "tema" ("Latin"). Another suggestion is Pauline von Abegg. Apparently, when he was twenty years old, Schumann met her and dedicated this work to her, as