“ad fontes!”
USA, 1854—the experience of life regarded as a means of instruction, in contrast to formal (higher) education—now often used with the implication that life experience is of greater benefit than formal education
Read MoreUSA, 1963—frequently in plural: a person on television who is shown merely speaking, as in a newscast or an interview
Read Morea state of depression or despair—1893—a shift in meaning of the British-English expression ‘blue funk’, denoting a state of extreme nervousness or dread (the original meaning in American English)
Read Morea person or thing, initially ugly or unpromising, that changes into something beautiful or admirable—New Zealand, 1848—from Hans Christian Andersen’s story about a supposed ugly duckling that turns out to be a swan
Read Moreabsenteeism among police officers (and by extension other workers) who claim to be ill but are in fact absent to support union contract demands or negotiations—USA, 1967—alludes to the traditional colour of police uniforms
Read Moretwo different people or things are totally incompatible—1901—alludes to “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” in Ballad of East and West (1892), by Rudyard Kipling
Read More1809—U.S. nautical, obsolete: the two-fathom mark on a sounding-line—Samuel Langhorne Clemens chose it as his pen-name in 1863, but a pilot named Isaiah Sellers had first used it as his pen-name
Read Morealso ‘mustang court’ and ‘kangaroo inquest’—USA, 1840—a mock court that disregards or parodies existing principles of law; any tribunal in which judgment is rendered arbitrarily or unfairly
Read MoreUSA, 1792—to say to a person the things that they want to hear—allegedly from the story of a white man and an Indian who went hunting together, and killed a turkey and a buzzard
Read Moreto vomit from drunkenness—U.S. students’ slang, 1980—likens the position of the hands of a person holding onto the sides of a toilet bowl while vomiting therein, to that of a bus driver’s hands holding the steering wheel
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