‘the Volvo set’: meaning and early occurrences
USA, 1976—Australia, 1982—trendy middle- to upper-middle-class people, who are often conservationists, and who, in some cases, have moved from cities and urban areas into country areas
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‘not to have two yachts to rub together’
applied to a rich person complaining of having insufficient means of existence; to a person who is merely free from financial worry—USA, 1936—coined humorously after ‘not to have two pennies to rub together’
Read More‘sticker-licker’: meaning and origin
state of South Australia, 1952—a traffic warden—from the fact that South Australian traffic wardens licked the adhesive parking tickets in order to stick them to the windscreens—hence also the verb ‘sticker-lick’
Read More‘go to Bath (and get your head shaved)’
UK, 1835—said to a person that the speaker does not wish to see again—refers to Bath, a spa in south-western England, where one goes to take the waters
Read More‘Queen Anne’s fan’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1883—a gesture of derision made by putting one’s thumb to one’s nose and outspreading the fingers like a fan; can be intensified by joining the tip of the little finger to the thumb of the other hand, whose fingers are also outspread fanwise—the motivation for the choice of ‘Queen Anne’ is unknown
Read More‘lager lout’: meaning and origin
UK, 1987—a young man who behaves in an unpleasant or aggressive manner as a result of drinking (typically lager) excessively—lager, a pale beer, is favoured by the young as opposed to the dark, traditional bitter English beer
Read More‘the (great) Australian salute’: meaning and origin
the movement of the hand in brushing away flies—first recorded in 1967 in a speech by Fred Chaney, Member of the Australian House of Representatives—variants: ‘the Queensland salute’; ‘the Barcoo salute’
Read More‘coconut (black)’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1981—used by some Aborigines of those who are considered to have betrayed their Aboriginal identity in order to be accepted into the white Australian society—the image is that (like the coconut, dark on the outside, but white on the inside) those Aboriginal ‘betrayers’ are outwardly black, but inwardly white
Read More‘nanny state’: meanings and origins
the government or its policies viewed as overprotective or as interfering unduly with personal choice; a state characterised as having such a government—first coined in 1952 by U.S. journalist Dorothy Thompson—recoined in 1965 by British politician Iain Macleod
Read More‘to apply the blowtorch to somebody’s belly’: meaning and origin
Australia—to test somebody’s fortitude; to put pressure on somebody—coined in 1983 by Neville Wran, Premier of New South Wales, to characterise the inexperience of Nick Greiner, the newly elected Leader of the Opposition
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