“ad fontes!”
Australia and New Zealand, 1939—to be in good spirits, ‘chirpy’—the image is of a boxful of chirping birds (cf. the extended form ‘happy as a bird in a box of birdseed’)—New-Zealand variant ‘to be a box of fluffy ducks’, also ‘to be a box of fluffies’
Read More1804—used to express resignation regarding an undesirable aspect of the behaviour of a girl or young woman, as being supposedly characteristic of her age or sex
Read More1721—used to express resignation regarding an undesirable aspect of the behaviour of a boy or young man, as being supposedly characteristic of his age or sex
Read MoreUSA, 1856—to ask someone young, ill-equipped or inexperienced to do difficult or complicated work—this phrase usually occurs in negative contexts, especially as ‘never send a boy to do a man’s work’
Read MoreBritish, 1907—denotes considerable talent or ability to grow plants—in this phrase, the adjective ‘green’ refers to the colour of growing vegetation—1921: ‘green-thumbed’ (adjective)
Read MoreBritish, 1906—denotes considerable talent or ability to grow plants—in this phrase, the adjective ‘green’ refers to the colour of growing vegetation—1914: ‘green-fingered’ (adjective)
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Australia, 1865—to be less of a fool than one appears to be—this phrase plays on two uses of the adjective ‘green’: 1) denoting the colour of growing vegetation, grass, etc. 2) denoting an inexperienced or naive person
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UK—1977: an event in which the winner of a game or competition is entitled to a set period of free shopping in a supermarket or other store, the object being to place as many products as possible in a shopping trolley during that time—1994: a quick or rushed shopping trip around a supermarket or other store
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USA, 1888—deranged, irrational (also, in early use, drunk)—based on the image of a trolley-wheel coming off its trolley-wire—‘trolley’, also ‘trolley-wheel’: a pulley at the end of a pole, for transmitting electric current from an overhead wire to the motor of a trolley-car
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a phenomenon in which the sun rises or sets in alignment with the streets that run east to west on the street grid of Manhattan, a borough of New York City—from ‘Manhattan’ and ‘-henge’, in ‘Stonehenge’, the name of a megalithic monument in England—coined by U.S. astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson
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word histories 