“ad fontes!”
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 MoreUSA, 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 Moremeans ‘backwards’, also ‘reluctantly’—USA, 1865—of unknown origin—allegedly borrowed from Irish English, but nothing seems to support this allegation
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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
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Australia, 1944—utterly worthless—one of the phrases built on the pattern ‘not worth a —’, such as ‘not worth a tinker’s curse’
Read More1942—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 MoreAustralia, 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 MoreAustralia—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
Read MoreAustralia, 1954—extremely ugly; extremely tired—the noun ‘sandshoe’ denotes a light canvas shoe with a rubber sole
Read MoreNew Zealand, 1885; Australia, 1897—to make a good impression on a person, to ingratiate oneself, to improve one’s position—refers to the children’s game of marbles
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