‘coffee royal’ | ‘café royale’: meaning and origin
a drink made from black coffee and brandy, cognac or other liquor—‘royale’ means: first-rate—‘café royale’ (USA, 1882): probably a Frenchification of earlier ‘coffee royal’
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‘cackle-cutting’: meaning and origin
UK, 1904—refers to the action of making someone stop chattering—from the colloquial imperative phrase ‘cut the cackle (and come to the horses)’, meaning: stop talking (and get to the heart of the matter)
Read More‘cradle Catholic’: meaning and origin
UK, 1930—one who is born into the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., a Catholic ‘from the cradle’)
Read More‘cut the cackle (and come to the horses)’: meaning and origin
‘stop talking (and get to the heart of the matter)’—UK, 1878—said to have been coined by circus proprietor Andrew Ducrow when apostrophising equestrian performers
Read More‘cakehole’: meaning and origin
a person’s mouth—British-Army slang, 1916
Read More‘latter wit’: meaning and origin
Yorkshire & Lancashire, 19th century—wisdom, a witty remark, etc., which occurs to a person after the event, typically too late to be of use
Read More‘milk moustache’: meaning and early occurrences
also ‘moustache of milk’—UK, 1872—a white residue, resembling a growth of hair above the upper lip, left after drinking milk
Read More‘donkey’s breakfast’: meanings and origin
UK, 1866, sailors’ slang: a straw mattress—Australia, 1884: a straw hat—in reference to donkeys’ diet
Read More‘history is but a fable agreed upon’: meaning and origin
1777, in a translation of a letter written by Voltaire in 1768—a loan translation from French ‘l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue’, first used in 1758 by the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius
Read More‘clerk of the weather’: meaning and origin
UK, 1812—an imaginary functionary humorously supposed to control the state of the weather—also ‘clerk of the weather office’
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