‘sunstruck bone’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1893—refers to extreme thirst or to extreme dryness—popularised by the Australian short-story writer and balladist Henry Lawson (1867-1922)
Read MoreCategory: literature
‘a thumbnail dipped in tar’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1901—refers to rough penmanship—alludes to Clancy of the Overflow (originally published in The Bulletin, Sydney, on 21st December 1889), by the Australian poet Andrew Barton Paterson
Read More‘the patter of tiny feet’: meanings and origin
1842—The noun ‘patter’ denotes the sound of light footfall, and the phrase ‘the patter of tiny feet’, and its variants, denote the presence of one or several young children, or the imminent birth of a child.
Read More‘to play a good knife and fork’: meaning and early occurrences
to eat heartily—first occurs in Augusta Triumphans: Or, The Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe (1728), by Daniel Defoe
Read More‘rose-coloured spectacles’: meaning and origin
UK, 1830—a happy or positive attitude that fails to notice negative things, leading to a view of life that is not realistic
Read More‘to beat Banagher’: meaning and origin
to surpass everything—Ireland, 1821—probably refers to a strong military fort at Banagher, a town in County Offaly, in the province of Leinster, Ireland
Read More‘to pile Pelion upon Ossa’: meanings and origin
1609—to add to what is already great, also to add difficulty to difficulty—Pelion and Ossa are two mountains in Thessaly—in Greek mythology, two giants, Otus and Ephialtes, tried to pile Pelion and Ossa on Olympus in order to reach the gods and overthrow them
Read More‘tiswas’: meaning and origin
UK, 1938—a state of nervous agitation or confusion; also, occasionally: a state of physical disorder or chaos—of unknown origin; perhaps a fanciful variant of the synonymous noun ‘tizz’
Read More‘lightbulb moment’: meaning and origin
USA, 1974—a moment of sudden realisation, enlightenment or inspiration—alludes to the representation of an illuminated lightbulb above a character’s head in a cartoon or comic strip, indicating that this character has had an idea
Read More‘not to be able to [verb] for toffee’: meaning and origin
UK, 1886—to be incompetent at performing the action denoted by the verb—the underlying notion is presumably of failing to win even the smallest prize
Read More
word histories 