Chinese dish, 1885, American English, from Chinese (Cantonese dialect) tsap sui "odds and ends, miscellaneous bits." A Cantonese dish brought to the U.S. West Coast by Chinese immigrants.

c. 1300, Prestre Johan, legendary medieval Christian king and priest, said to have ruled either in the Far East or Ethiopia. Prestre (attested as a surname late 12c.) is from Vulgar Latin *prester, a transition between Latin presbyter and English priest. First mentioned in the West by mid-12c. chronicler Otto of Freising, who told how Johannes Presbyter won a great victory over the Persians and the Medes. Between 1165 and 1177 a forged letter purporting to be from him circulated in Europe. All this recalls the time when the Christian West was militarily threatened on its frontiers by Muslim powers, dreaming of a mythical deliverer. Compare Old French prestre Jehan (13c.), Italian prete Gianni.

"part of the Atlantic Ocean which lies between the West Indies and the west coast of Africa," 1788, in the agitation against the trans-Atlantic slave trade, from middle (adj.) + passage.

It is clear that none of the unfortunate people, perhaps at this moment on board, can stand upright, but that they must sit down, and contract their limbs within the limits of little more than three square feet, during the whole of the middle passage. I cannot compare the scene on board this vessel, to any other than that of a pen of sheep; with this difference only, that the one have the advantages of a wholesome air, while that, which the others breathe, is putrid. [Thomas Clarkson, "An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species," 1788]

an English notion of a stereotypical French oath, 1869, from French sacré bleu, literally "holy blue," a euphemism for sacré Dieu (1768), "holy God." From Old French sacrer, from Latin sacrare "to make or declare sacred" (see sacred). Such things are never idiomatic. In an old French-language comic set in the U.S. Wild West, the angry cowboys say "Bloody Hell!"