‘bone idle’: meaning and origin
Scotland, 1825 (as ‘bane idle’)—England, 1839—utterly lazy or indolent—‘bone’ seems to be used as an intensifier with adverbial force in the sense ‘through to the bone’, i.e., ‘deeply and fundamentally’
Read MoreCategory: United Kingdom & Ireland
‘that cock won’t fight’: meaning and origin
UK, 1789—With reference to cockfighting, this phrase is used to express the opinion that a particular plan or approach will not succeed.
Read More‘lead in one’s pencil’: meaning and origin
USA, 1927—denotes male vigour, especially sexual—with wordplay on ‘penis’—interestingly, via an alteration of the Latin diminutive ‘pēnĭcillus’, denoting literally a little tail, hence a painter’s brush or pencil, ‘pencil’ is derived from Latin ‘pēnis’, denoting literally a tail, hence the penis
Read Morean Australian use of ‘boots under the bed’
has been used to denote evidence of a de facto relationship affecting a woman’s eligibility for Social-Security benefits—refers to past practices of field officers inspecting homes and bedrooms
Read More‘to judge a book by its cover’: meaning and origin
USA, 1837—to make assumptions about someone or something based on appearance or on superficial characteristics—the metaphor occurs in the preface to ‘Truth in Fiction: Or, Morality in Masquerade. A Collection of Two hundred twenty five Select Fables of Æsop, and other Authors’ (London, 1708), by Edmund Arwaker
Read More‘bread-artist’: meaning and origin
an artist or writer who produces what is considered to be inferior work simply to earn a living—loan translation from German ‘Brotkünstler’—first used in 1827 by Scottish historian and political philosopher Thomas Carlyle in a text about German literature
Read More‘to break a butterfly on a wheel’: meaning and origin
to use unnecessary force in destroying something fragile—alludes to a wheel used as an instrument of torture—first occurs in An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), by the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who perhaps coined this phrase
Read More‘the whole box and dice’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1828—Ireland, 1832—a group of things or people in its entirety—‘box’ refers to a box from which dice are thrown in gaming or gambling
Read More‘box of ivories’, ‘kissing-trap’ and other slang expressions for the mouth
The following slang expressions have been used to designate the mouth: ‘box of ivories’ (also ‘ivory-box’); ‘box of dominoes’ (also ‘domino-box’); ‘bone-box’; ‘potato-box’; ‘potato-jaw’; ‘potato-trap’; ‘kissing-trap’.
Read More‘girls will be girls’: meaning and early occurrences
1804—used to express resignation regarding an undesirable aspect of the behaviour of a girl or young woman, as being supposedly characteristic of her age or sex
Read More
