‘(as) game as Ned Kelly’: meaning and origin

29th Oct 2021.Reading time 12 minutes.

Australia, 1907—very spirited or brave—refers to the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly (1855-1880), leader of a band of horse and cattle thieves and bank raiders operating in Victoria, who was eventually hanged in Melbourne

origin of ‘impressionist’ and ‘impressionism’

8th Jun 2021.Reading time 26 minutes.

‘impressionist’ (1875) from French ‘impressionniste’ (1874)—a painter who was an exponent of ‘impressionism’ (1877), a movement in painting developed in France in the last third of the 19th century—French ‘impressionnisme’ may have been coined in 1858

‘fatberg ’ | ‘concreteberg’

24th May 2021.Reading time 5 minutes.

UK—2008 ‘fatberg’, after ‘iceberg’: a large mass of fat and waste material in a sewerage system—originally a large lump of congealed cooking fat washed up on a beach—2019 ‘concreteberg’, after ‘fatberg’: a large mass of concrete in a sewerage system, consisting of cement that has been poured down a drain

‘worm’s-eye view’: meaning and origin

10th Apr 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

USA, 1898—a view as seen from below or from a humble position—refers to a view taken as from the standpoint of a worm, i.e. from ground-level—coined after ‘bird’s-eye view’ (1782), denoting a view of a landscape from above, such as is presented to the eye of a bird

origin of ‘all right, you heard a seal bark’

9th Aug 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

refers to “All right, have it your own way—you heard a seal bark”, the caption to a drawing by James Thurber, originally published in The New Yorker of 30th January 1932

history of the phrase ‘every picture tells a story’

3rd Jan 2020.Reading time 19 minutes.

used of images suggestive of real or imaginary events—UK and USA early 1900s: popularised by its use as an advertising slogan for Doan’s Backache Kidney Pills

‘a bird cannot fly on one wing’: meaning and origin

25th Dec 2019.Reading time 20 minutes.

USA, 1902—jocularly used to justify the necessity of taking another alcoholic drink—Irish variant (1947): ‘a bird never flew on one wing’

meaning and origin of the phrase “’arf a mo’, Kaiser!”

20th Dec 2019.Reading time 16 minutes.

“half a moment, Kaiser!”—1914 as the caption to a drawing by Bert Thomas, published in the Weekly Dispatch (London) to advertise a tobacco fund for soldiers

‘Aunt Edna’ (typical theatregoer of conservative taste)

30th Nov 2019.Reading time 10 minutes.

coined by the English playwright Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) in the preface to Volume 2 of ‘The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan’ (1953)

the cultural background to the plebeian ‘trunkmaker’

16th Nov 2019.Reading time 12 minutes.

UK, 18th and 19th centuries—‘trunkmaker’ was often employed with allusion to the use of the sheets of unsaleable books for trunk-linings

word histories

Category: arts