“ad fontes!”
Australia, 1951—used of someone who has departed and left no indication of their present whereabouts—purportedly from the story of one Malley, who was told by his boss to hold a cow; on the boss’s return, the cow had disappeared, and Malley said “She’s a goner!”
Read MoreAustralia, 1960—very fit and well, in robust health—the image is of a bull strengthened by his living in one of the semi-desert areas of Australia in which the principal vegetation is mallee, i.e., low-growing bushy eucalyptus
Read MoreThis phrase is applied to someone who is very strong and resilient in the face of hardship or pain. It originated in the USA in 1918; it has been used in British English since 1933.
Read MoreUSA, 1979—the children’s ability to pressurise their parents into buying something, or doing something for them, by continuing to ask for it until their parents agree to do it—originally referred to television advertising targeting children
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1941 in the sense ‘under the influence of alcohol’—aided by the phonetic similarity of ‘grip’ and ‘grape’, this phrase has, in the course of time, been coined on separate occasions by various persons, independently from one another
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Australia, 1944—to the greatest possible extent; sated with food—refers to a large floppy bow worn at the neck
Read MoreAustralia, 1909—to the greatest possible extent; sated with food—dolls used to have modelled wax heads with a neck shaped so that it could be sewn to a stuffed rag body
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Australia, 1940—means ‘speedily’—refers to the tram service between Sydney, New South Wales, and Bondi Beach, a popular beach located 4 miles east of Sydney city centre
Read MoreAustralia, 1888—defined by Wilkes in A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (1990) as “An imaginary rich uncle overseas, backing some venture in which the unwary may be persuaded to invest.”
Read MoreAustralia, 1888—denotes a letter (i.e., a written message)—‘yabber’: as a noun, denotes speech, language, talk; as a verb, means to talk—from an aboriginal stem ‘ya’, meaning to speak
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