‘café-hopping’: original meaning
USA, 1917—the practice of enjoying the nightlife of a city or town by visiting multiple bars and nightclubs
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‘to have a canary’: meaning and origin
chiefly Irish—to lose one’s composure, to be extremely upset—UK, 1970—probably a humorous play on ‘to have a coronary’ (i.e., to have a heart attack)
Read More‘bikini body’: meanings and origin
USA, 1961—the type of body, typically slim and shapely, conventionally considered to look attractive in a bikini—hence also, by synecdoche: a woman whose body is of that type
Read More‘love-glove’: meaning and origin
U.S. slang, 1979—a condom—based on the phonetic similarity between the two nouns that compose it
Read More‘bathroom humour’: meaning and origin
crude humour centring chiefly on bodily functions—USA, 1931
Read More‘to avoid clichés like the plague’: meaning and origin
UK, 1935—a humorous self-contradictory phrase which includes the clichéd phrase ‘to avoid like the plague’ in order to express the necessity of avoiding clichés—as a piece of advice for writers, has itself become a cliché
Read More‘stupid o’clock’: meaning and origin
UK, late 1980s—the adverb ‘o’clock’ is colloquially and humorously used with adjectives to denote an unreasonably, excessively or inconveniently early or late hour—as in ‘stupid o’clock’, ‘silly o’clock’, etc.
Read More‘glam-ma’: meaning and origin
USA, 2001—a glamorous grandmother, especially one who is relatively young or fashion-conscious—a blend of the nouns ‘glamour’ and ‘grandma’
Read More‘little-girl-lost’ | ‘little-boy-lost’: meaning and origin
USA, early 1930s—adjectives—‘little-girl-lost’: resembling (that of) a small girl who has lost her way—‘little-boy-lost’: resembling (that of) a small boy who has lost his way
Read More‘to get one’s panties in a bunch’: meaning and origin
also ‘in a wad’, ‘in a knot’, etc.—to become unduly agitated or angry—the plural noun ‘panties’ refers to short underpants worn by women or girls—American English, 1975
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