‘not worth a crumpet’: meaning and early occurrences
Australia, 1944—utterly worthless—one of the phrases built on the pattern ‘not worth a —’, such as ‘not worth a tinker’s curse’
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‘panier de crabes’: meaning and origin
1942—an arena of fierce or ruthless rivalry—borrowed from French: literally ‘basket of crabs’—the image is of crabs fighting, if not devouring one another, when kept in a basket
Read More‘oojamaflip’: meanings (and origin?)
UK—1969: a type of collapsible trolley designed for use in the home—1970: a thing whose name the speaker cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention—perhaps from ‘oojah’, ‘-ma-’ in nouns such as ‘thingamabob’, and the verb ‘flip’
Read More‘oojah-cum-spiff’: meaning (and origin?)
fine, all right—UK, 1923 (perhaps coined by P. G. Wodehouse)—perhaps an alteration of ‘oojah capivvy’ after ‘cum’ and ‘spiffy’
Read More‘oojah’: meanings (and origin?)
UK, 1917—used when one cannot think of, or does not wish to use, the name of a thing; by extension, a useful implement, a gadget—origin unknown
Read More‘Christmas hold’: meaning and origin
also ‘Christmas grip’—Australia, prison slang, 1953—a grabbing of another’s testicles—based on the image is of a handful of nuts, alludes to ‘nut’, denoting a dry fruit consisting of an edible kernel enclosed in a hard or leathery shell, and a testicle
Read More‘within a bull’s roar of’: a measure of distance
Australia, 1930—when used negatively, means ‘far away from’; when used affirmatively, means ‘not too far away from’—refers to the fact that a roaring bull can be heard over a great distance
Read More‘boudoir bandicoot’: meaning and origin
Australia—a promiscuous male—coined in 1983, during a parliamentary debate, by Michael Hodgman, then Member of the Australian House of Representatives, to describe Bob Hawke, then Prime Minister of Australia
Read More‘like a twisted sandshoe’: meanings and early occurrences
Australia, 1954—extremely ugly; extremely tired—the noun ‘sandshoe’ denotes a light canvas shoe with a rubber sole
Read More‘to make one’s marble(s) good’: meaning and origin
New Zealand, 1885; Australia, 1897—to make a good impression on a person, to ingratiate oneself, to improve one’s position—refers to the children’s game of marbles
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word histories 