origin of ‘Bananaland’, colloquial Australian name for Queensland
Australia, 1880—from the fact that bananas grow in abundance in Queensland (a state comprising the north-eastern part of Australia)
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meaning and origin of ‘to have straws in one’s hair’
to be insane—late 19th century—originated in the fact that in 19th-century productions of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, Ophelia appeared with straws in her hair in her ‘mad scene’
Read Moremeaning and earliest instances of ‘bums on seats’
UK, 1967—chiefly British—‘bums on seats’: the members of an audience, at a theatre, cinema or other place of entertainment, especially when viewed as a source of income
Read More‘to fall off (the back of) a lorry’ (‘to be stolen’)
UK, 1953, humorous and euphemistic—‘to fall off (the back of) a lorry’: of goods, ‘to be acquired in dubious or unspecified circumstances’, especially ‘to be stolen’—variant with ‘truck’ came into use later in Australian and North American English
Read More‘all behind, like a cow’s tail’ (left behind, late)
The phrase ‘all behind, like a cow’s tail’ and its variants mean ‘left behind’ and ‘late in accomplishing a task’. They appeared in print in the mid-19th century in the USA, Australia and Britain.
Read Morea word invented by Jonathan Swift: ‘yahoo’
‘yahoo’: rude, noisy or violent person—word invented by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) as the name of a race of brutish creatures resembling men in Gulliver’s Travels (1726)—came to be applied to the orang-utan
Read Moreorigin of the Australian phrase ‘Sydney or the bush’
‘Sydney or the bush’: all or nothing (1902)—based on the metaphorical opposition between an easy life in the city and a hard life working in the outback, this phrase was apparently originally used by people risking all on the toss of a coin.
Read More‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’
denotes a situation in which the alternatives are considered equivalent—first recorded, as ‘six of the one and half a dozen of the other’, on 24th April 1790 in the journal of Ralph Clark, a British naval officer—synonym: ‘(as) broad as long’
Read More‘to plough one’s own furrow’ – ‘creuser son sillon’
‘to plough a lonely furrow’, or ‘one’s own furrow’ (UK, 1901): to carry on without help, support or companionship—French ‘creuser son sillon’ (‘to dig one’s own furrow’, first used by Voltaire): to carry out with courage and perseverance the task undertaken
Read Moreorigin of the pub-name ‘the Swan with Two Necks’
Alteration of ‘the Swan with Two Nicks’—All the Thames swans belong to the Crown, the Vintners’ Company or the Dyers’ Company. A swan with two nicks belongs to the Vintners’ Company, with one nick to the Dyers’ Company, with no nicks to the Crown.
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