‘cakehole’: meaning and origin
a person’s mouth—British-Army slang, 1916
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‘latter wit’: meaning and origin
Yorkshire & Lancashire, 19th century—wisdom, a witty remark, etc., which occurs to a person after the event, typically too late to be of use
Read More‘milk moustache’: meaning and early occurrences
also ‘moustache of milk’—UK, 1872—a white residue, resembling a growth of hair above the upper lip, left after drinking milk
Read More‘history is but a fable agreed upon’: meaning and origin
1777, in a translation of a letter written by Voltaire in 1768—a loan translation from French ‘l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue’, first used in 1758 by the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius
Read More‘to put on a bit of pudding’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1957—to gain weight around one’s middle
Read More‘not worth a pudding’: meaning and early occurrences
1546—of little or no worth—here, ‘pudding’ refers to a sausage-like mass of seasoned minced meat, oatmeal, etc., stuffed into a prepared skin and boiled
Read More‘not a word of the pudding’: meaning and early occurrences
1666—a warning or exhortation to say nothing about a particular matter—of unknown origin—may allude to the mysterious nature of pudding stuffing
Read More‘jobation’: meaning and origin
1687—a lengthy and tedious reprimand—from the verb ‘job’ (1666), meaning: to reprimand in a long and tedious harangue—with allusion to the lengthy reproofs addressed to Job by his friends in the Book of Job
Read More‘to cut a long story short’: meaning and early occurrences
also, and originally (1729), ‘to make a long story short’: to be brief or concise—this phrase is typically used as a sentence adverbial, with the sense: in short, in summary, briefly
Read MoreAustralian uses of ‘heifer-paddock’
literally (1845): an enclosure in which calves are isolated from their mothers until weaned—figuratively, humorously and offensively (1885): a girls’ boarding-school—similar to the use of ‘cow’ to derogatorily designate a girl or woman
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