‘love in a cottage’: meaning and origin
a marriage for love, or a romantic relationship, faced with insufficient financial means—UK, 1745
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‘romantasy’: meanings and origin
a fantastical or idealised story, situation, etc., involving romance—USA, 1928—a blend of either the noun ‘romance’ or the adjective ‘romantic’, and of the noun ‘fantasy’
Read More‘(as) extinct as the diplodocus’: meaning and origin
of a person or thing: irretrievably defunct or out of date—UK, 1905—perhaps originally in allusion to ‘Diplodocus Carnegii’, named after Andrew Carnegie, who, that year, presented the skeleton of that diplodocus to the Natural History Museum of London
Read More‘Charlie (Big) Potatoes’: meaning and origin
a rich and important man—USA, 1958, as ‘Charlie Potatoes’—UK, 1995, as ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’— ‘Charlie’: generic term for a man—‘potatoes’: perhaps slang for ‘money’, ‘dollars’
Read More‘to make a horlicks of (something)’: meaning and origin
to make a mess of (something)—UK, 1970—used in reference to the trade-name of a malted milk-powder—perhaps as a euphemism for some crude word
Read More‘jobsworth’: meaning and origin
a person in authority who insists on adhering to rules even at the expense of common sense—1965, in the British pop-music milieu—from ‘job’s worth’ in the phrase ‘to be more than one’s job’s worth’
Read More‘I wouldn’t piss on (a person) if (that person) were on fire’: meaning and origin
‘I feel intense dislike or contempt for (a person)’—USA, 1950—also occasionally used of miserliness
Read More‘purrfect’: meaning and origin
USA, 1876—perfect, especially in cat-related contexts—colloquial, humorous blend of ‘purr’ and ‘perfect’
Read More‘birds in their little nests agree’: meaning and origin
children, especially siblings, should not argue among themselves—UK, 1818—alludes to Love between Brothers and Sisters, in Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1715), by Isaac Watts
Read More‘hair-triggered’: meanings and origin
literally (UK, 1803): of a firearm: equipped with a hair trigger—hence, figuratively (Ireland, 1853): reacting immediately to the slightest provocation or cause
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