‘singing milkshake’: meaning and origin
1979—nickname given, in particular, to singer Olivia Newton-John—alludes to the type of popular music that (like a milkshake) is discarded as soon as it has been consumed
Read MoreCategory: United Kingdom & Ireland
‘overpaid, overdressed, oversexed and over here’
Australia and U.S.A, 1944—purportedly applied by the British and the Australians to the U.S. soldiers stationed in their respective countries during World War II—British self-deprecating retort: ‘underpaid, underdressed, undersexed and under Eisenhower’
Read More‘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‘tickety-boo’: meaning, early occurrences and origin
UK, 1938—old-fashioned informal British-English adjective meaning ‘in good order’, ‘fine’—origin obscure: perhaps from Hindi ‘ṭhīk hai’ (‘all right’) or from ‘the ticket’ (‘the correct thing’); or it may simply be a purely fanciful formation
Read More‘Mondayitis’: meaning and early occurrences
reluctance to attend school or work, or a reduction in working efficiency, experienced on a Monday morning—UK and USA, 1908; Australia, 1910—the suffix ‘-itis’ is applied to a state of mind or tendency fancifully regarded as a disease
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‘Briticism’: meaning and origin
USA, 1868—coined by U.S. critic Richard Grant White (1822-1885) to denote a word or expression whose original acceptation (preserved in U.S. English) was changed to one that he regarded as debased
Read More‘(as) drunk as Chloe’: meaning and purported origin
UK, 1788—very drunk—may refer to Chloe, a woman with whom the English poet Matthew Prior (1664-1721) allegedly drank, and whom he often mentioned in his poems
Read More‘Chinese burn’: meaning and origin
UK, 1956, children’s slang—an act of placing both hands on a person’s wrist or arm and then twisting it to produce a burning sensation—alludes to the fiendish methods of torture attributed to the Chinese
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