‘the big smoke’: meanings and origins
Australian English, 1848: any urban area (said to be of Aboriginal origin)—Irish and British English, 1862: Dublin and London—alludes to smoke as characteristic of an urban area
Read More“Ad fontes!”
Australian English, 1848: any urban area (said to be of Aboriginal origin)—Irish and British English, 1862: Dublin and London—alludes to smoke as characteristic of an urban area
Read More1842—The noun ‘patter’ denotes the sound of light footfall, and the phrase ‘the patter of tiny feet’, and its variants, denote the presence of one or several young children, or the imminent birth of a child.
Read Moreto eat heartily—first occurs in Augusta Triumphans: Or, The Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe (1728), by Daniel Defoe
Read MoreUK, 1982—denotes a headbutt—alludes to the reputation for violence accorded to some parts of Glasgow, a city in west-central Scotland
Read MoreAustralia, 1981—very dry—alludes to the alleged poor personal hygiene of the British—here, the Australian noun ‘Pommy’ designates a British person
Read MoreUK, 1830—a happy or positive attitude that fails to notice negative things, leading to a view of life that is not realistic
Read Moreto surpass everything—Ireland, 1821—probably refers to a strong military fort at Banagher, a town in County Offaly, in the province of Leinster, Ireland
Read Morethe very, the real, or the proper person or thing—1830—of Scottish or Irish origin—perhaps an extended form of the synonymous phrase ‘the potato’
Read Moreno money, nothing—UK, 1864, in a text by the British scholar D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson—from ‘n-’ in the determiner ‘no’, meaning ‘not any’, and ‘-uppence’ in ‘tuppence’
Read MoreChina, 1849—extortion—from ‘squeeze’, denoting a forced exaction or impost made by a Chinese official or servant, and ‘pidgin’ in its original sense of business
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