‘beau-catcher’: meaning and origin
USA, 1815—a circular curl of hair (sometimes artificial), usually pressed flat against the temple or forehead
Read MoreCategory: USA & Canada
‘a fox in the henhouse’: meaning and early occurrences
a sly, treacherous or deceitful person, especially one who is secretly acting against the interests of the community or organisation to which he or she belongs—mid-19th century
Read More‘anything in trousers’: meaning and origin
USA, 1858—any man—often in contexts in which a person, especially a woman, is disparagingly characterised as sexually promiscuous or indiscriminate
Read Morenotes on ‘to ghostwrite’ and on ‘ghostwriter’
UK, 1907: ‘to ghostwrite’ (to write a book, an article, etc., for another person, under whose name it is then published—USA, 1908: ‘ghostwriter’ (a person who ghostwrites)
Read Morenotes on the nouns ‘woodpushing’ and ‘woodpusher’
‘woodpushing’: chess-playing, draughts-playing—‘woodpusher’: a chess-player, a draughts-player—refers to the wooden pieces that chess-players and draughts-players move across the board
Read More‘mother-in-law seat’: meaning and origin
an uncovered extra seat at the back or on the side of a two-seater motor car—USA, 1907
Read More‘mother-in-law joke’: meanings and origin
USA, 1874—a joke made at the expense of the joke-teller’s (real or fictitious) mother-in-law; this type of joke considered (especially depreciatively) as a genre
Read More‘close shave’: meaning and origin
a narrow escape from danger, disaster or mishap—UK, 1820—refers to the act of shaving with a cutthroat razor, which may result in injury
Read More‘green about the gills’: meaning and origin
looking or feeling ill or nauseated—1843, in a letter by Charles Dickens—when applied to a person, the plural noun ‘gills’ designates the flesh under the jaws and ears; also the cheeks
Read More‘like herrings in a barrel’: meaning and origin
crowded or confined tightly together—Britain, 1706—in early use, this phrase often referred to the transatlantic slave trade
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