‘to open the kimono’: meaning and origin
USA, 1975—especially used of a firm—to divulge information or secrets—based on the notion of opening one’s kimono and revealing one’s naked body
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‘mahogany reef’: meanings and origin
USA, 1924—(jocular, nautical) a bar, i.e., a counter in a pub, restaurant, etc., across which alcoholic drinks are served—also used as the name, or nickname, of an actual drinking establishment—skiers’ corresponding phrase: ‘mahogany ridge’
Read More‘birth-control glasses’: meaning and origin
USA, 1986—ugly spectacles, in particular army-issue spectacles—the image is that those spectacles are so ugly that nobody would want to make a baby with somebody wearing a pair—also ‘BCGs’
Read More‘bark mitzvah’: meaning and origin
USA, 1966—a (13th-birthday) party held for a dog—a blend of ‘bark’ (the sharp explosive cry of a dog), and of ‘bar mitzvah’ (the coming-of-age ceremony for a 13-year-old Jewish boy), or ‘bat mitzvah’ (the equivalent ceremony for a Jewish girl)
Read More‘dine and dash’: meanings and origin
USA, 1975—to hastily or furtively leave a restaurant, cafe, etc., in order to avoid paying for one’s bill—also used as a noun, especially as a modifier—has also been used of meals eaten quickly
Read More‘as scarce as rocking-horse manure’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1937—very scarce—‘rocking horse’: a toy horse mounted on rockers or springs for a child to sit on and rock to and fro—this phrase has come to be also used in British English and American English
Read More‘were you born in a sawmill?’ | ‘were you born in a barn?’
USA, late 19th century—these phrases a) express mild remonstrance towards a person who has left a door open, exposing others to a draft; b) indicate that a person is behaving in a rude or uncouth manner
Read More‘flexitarian’: meaning and origin
USA, 1992 (1981?)—adjective: primarily but not strictly vegetarian—noun: a person who follows a primarily but not strictly vegetarian diet—a blend of ‘flexible’ and ‘vegetarian’
Read More‘to talk through (the back of) one’s neck’
1890s—to use extravagant words or language not substantiated by fact; to talk nonsense—occurs in particular in stories by the British authors Ernest William Hornung (1866-1921) and Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975)
Read More‘contronym’: meaning and origin
a word with two opposite or contradictory meanings—coined by Jack Herring in 1962—Joseph T. Shipley had developed the same notion in Playing With Words (1960); he called it ‘autantonym’
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word histories 