‘vee-dub’: meaning and origin
a Volkswagen car—USA, 1967—from the pronunciation of ‘VW’ (initialism from the name ‘Volkswagen’)—‘dub’: shortened form of the adjective ‘double’ in ‘double U’
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‘eureka moment’: meaning and origin
a moment of sudden discovery, inspiration or insight—1918—from the reputed exclamation of Archimedes when he realised that the volume of a solid could be calculated by measuring the water displaced when it was immersed
Read More‘to paint someone into a corner’: meanings and origin
USA, 1929: to force someone into a situation from which it is not easy to escape—the image is of someone who is painting a floor and ends up in a corner of the room with wet paint all around them (USA, 1913)
Read More‘to jockey for position’: meanings and origin
literally, of a jockey in horseracing (USA, 1869): to manoeuvre in order to get one’s horse into a desired position at the beginning of a race—figuratively (USA, 1881): to manoeuvre in order to gain advantage over rivals in a competitive situation
Read More‘to be packed like sardines’: meaning and origin
UK, 1841—to be crowded or confined tightly together, as sardines in a tin
Read More‘to have a béguin for’: meaning and origin
‘to have a fancy for’—UK, 1900—loan translation from French ‘avoir un béguin pour’—French ‘béguin’ is from ‘s’embéguiner de’, meaning ‘to put on a bonnet’, hence ‘to put a sudden capricious idea into one’s head’
Read More‘(as) poor as Job’s cat’: meaning and origin
‘extremely poor’—USA, 1810—humorous variant of ‘(as) poor as Job’, from the name of the eponymous protagonist of a book of the Old Testament, taken as the type of extreme poverty
Read More‘(as) poor as Job’s turkey’: meaning and origin
‘extremely poor’—USA, 1817—humorous variant of ‘(as) poor as Job’, from the name of the eponymous protagonist of a book of the Old Testament, taken as the type of extreme poverty
Read More‘scholasticide’: meaning and origin
the systematic destruction of Palestinian education by Israel—apparently coined in 2009 by Karma Nabulsi, Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Read More‘nepotism baby’ and ‘nepo baby’: meaning and origin
a person whose career is believed to have been advanced by having a famous or successful relative—‘nepotism baby’ (USA, 1915)—‘nepo baby’ (USA, 2022)
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