‘kir royale’: meaning and origin
USA, 1974, as ‘royale kir’—a drink made from champagne, or sparkling white wine, and crème de cassis—from ‘kir’ (a drink made from dry white wine and crème de cassis) and ‘royale’ (first-rate)
Read MoreCategory: USA & Canada
‘cradle Anglican’: meaning and origin
Canada, 1985—one who is born into the Anglican Church (i.e., an Anglican ‘from the cradle’)
Read More‘piehole’: meaning and origin
a person’s mouth—U.S. slang, 1983
Read More‘milk moustache’: meaning and early occurrences
also ‘moustache of milk’—UK, 1872—a white residue, resembling a growth of hair above the upper lip, left after drinking milk
Read More‘on the wrong/right side of history’: meanings and early occurrences
USA, 1888—at variance/in line with the (likely) thought, practice or judgement of the future; at odds/coincident with how commentators view (or are likely to view) an issue or action retrospectively
Read More‘history is but a fable agreed upon’: meaning and origin
1777, in a translation of a letter written by Voltaire in 1768—a loan translation from French ‘l’histoire n’est qu’une fable convenue’, first used in 1758 by the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius
Read More‘Concordski’: meaning and origin
UK, 1965—humorous—the Soviet supersonic airliner Tupolev Tu-144—from ‘Concorde’, the name of an Anglo-French supersonic airliner, and the suffix ‘-ski’, in humorous imitation of Russian
Read More‘perp walk’: meaning and origin
U.S. slang, 1986—a march into or out of a police car, courthouse, etc., that a person in police custody is made to perform for the benefit of the news media—‘perp’: shortening of ‘perpetrator’
Read More‘mauvaise langue’: meanings and origin
UK, 1822—a vituperative gossip, a scandalmonger; an evil or malicious tongue—a borrowing from French ‘mauvaise langue’ (literally ‘bad tongue’) of same significations
Read More‘goofy foot’: meaning and origin
one who rides a surfboard with the right foot forward instead of the left—USA, 1960 (as a verb)—here, ‘goofy’ seems to be related to prejudice against left-handedness and left-footedness
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