‘Aunt’ | ‘Granny’: The Sydney Morning Herald
‘Aunt’ (1842) and ‘Granny’ (1851)—nicknames for The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales), with reference to its conservativism—‘Granny’ has come to be used affectionately
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‘couldn’t lead a flock of homing pigeons’: meaning and origin
used of a person who is incapable of organising the simplest event, task, etc.—Australian politics, 1945, as a comment on Robert Gordon Menzies, generally ascribed to William Morris Hughes
Read More‘charity dame’ | ‘charity moll’: meaning and origin
Australia—‘charity dame’ 1949—‘charity moll’ 1962—an amateur prostitute who charges less than the usual rate—from ‘Moll’, pet form of the female forename ‘Mary’, the noun ‘moll’ has long been used to designate a prostitute
Read More‘(as) [adjective] as a meat-ax(e)’: meaning and origin
USA, 1825—the phrases that are built on the pattern ‘(as) [adjective] as a meat-ax(e)’ intensify the meaning of the adjective—this adjective can be ‘savage’, ‘wicked’, or ‘mad’
Read Morenotes on ‘backwards, the way Molly went to church’
means ‘backwards’, also ‘reluctantly’—USA, 1865—of unknown origin—allegedly borrowed from Irish English, but nothing seems to support this allegation
Read More‘Bugs Bunny’ (i.e., an eagle)
Australia, 1954—derogatory nickname for the metal eagle at the top of the Australian-American Memorial in Canberra—alludes to the fact that, from a distance, the eagle’s upswept wings look like a rabbit’s ears
Read More‘not worth a crumpet’: meaning and early occurrences
Australia, 1944—utterly worthless—one of the phrases built on the pattern ‘not worth a —’, such as ‘not worth a tinker’s curse’
Read More‘panier de crabes’: meaning and origin
1942—an arena of fierce or ruthless rivalry—borrowed from French: literally ‘basket of crabs’—the image is of crabs fighting, if not devouring one another, when kept in a basket
Read More‘within a bull’s roar of’: a measure of distance
Australia, 1930—when used negatively, means ‘far away from’; when used affirmatively, means ‘not too far away from’—refers to the fact that a roaring bull can be heard over a great distance
Read More‘boudoir bandicoot’: meaning and origin
Australia—a promiscuous male—coined in 1983, during a parliamentary debate, by Michael Hodgman, then Member of the Australian House of Representatives, to describe Bob Hawke, then Prime Minister of Australia
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