‘(as) cold as a stepmother’s breath’: meanings and origin
Irish English, 1834—extremely cold, literally (i.e., with reference to low temperatures) and figuratively (i.e., with reference to lack of feeling, of emotion)
Read MoreCategory: United Kingdom & Ireland
two usages of ‘pox doctor’s clerk’
UK 1945: ‘as lucky as the pox doctor’s clerk’: very lucky—UK 1954, ‘to look like a pox doctor’s clerk’, Australia 1957, ‘done up like a pox doctor’s clerk’: dressed nattily but in bad taste
Read More‘as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike’: meaning and early occurrences
This phrase means ‘utterly useless’. The earliest occurrences that I have found are British English (from 1981 onwards) and Australian English (from 1983 onwards).
Read More‘to get off at Redfern’ (to practise coitus interruptus)
Australia, 1967—Redfern: a train station positioned one stop before Sydney Central Station—British-English regional variations include, in Newcastle upon Tyne: ‘to get out at Gateshead’
Read More‘car-crash television’: meaning and origin
television programmes that are gratuitously shocking or sensational, or of poor quality—from their eliciting in the viewer a similar horrified fascination to that experienced by people watching scenes of cars crashing
Read More‘croque-monsieur’: meaning and origin
France, 1891; UK, 1908—a sandwich filled with ham and cheese, and toasted or grilled—from ‘croque’, conjugated form of the verb ‘croquer’, to bite, to crunch, and the noun ‘monsieur’ (the reason that this noun was chosen is unknown)
Read Morehistory of the phrase ‘Scout’s honour’
UK, 1909: expresses the speaker’s good faith—literally, in Scouting for Boys (1908), by Robert Baden-Powell: the honour on which a Scout promises to obey the Scout Law
Read More‘stick it up your jumper’: meaning and origin
UK, 1968—British and Australian: expresses indifference towards, or rejection of, a suggestion—from ‘Umpa, Umpa, Stick It Up Your Jumper’, a song recorded in 1935 by The Two Leslies (Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes)
Read More‘down the back of the sofa’: literal and figurative uses
UK and Ireland—the small change that has slipped down between the cushions and the back, or the arms, of a sofa—also used figuratively: public funds that are ‘miraculously’ found; permanent end; wasted money
Read Moresome jocular uses of ‘a bit tight under the arms’
UK and USA, 1908: applied to a pair of trousers much too large for the wearer—later also applied to small cars and to socks much too large for the wearer
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word histories 