“ad fontes!”
Australia, 1930—describes a person who is reluctant, or very slow, to pay for something—the image is of a snake biting the person when they put their hand in their pocket to get at their money
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USA, 1973—a euphemism for a lie—coined on 17th June 1973, during the Watergate scandal, by Ronald Lewis Ziegler, President Richard Nixon’s Press Secretary
Read MoreUK, 1968—British and Australian: expresses indifference towards, or rejection of, a suggestion—from ‘Umpa, Umpa, Stick It Up Your Jumper’, a song recorded in 1935 by The Two Leslies (Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes)
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UK and Ireland—the small change that has slipped down between the cushions and the back, or the arms, of a sofa—also used figuratively: public funds that are ‘miraculously’ found; permanent end; wasted money
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UK and USA, 1908: applied to a pair of trousers much too large for the wearer—later also applied to small cars and to socks much too large for the wearer
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UK and Ireland, since 1913—this jocular phrase has been used as an ironic expression of gratitude and as a goodbye
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conveys derisive self-congratulation for an action that the speaker has done from a sense of duty rather than for pleasure—from a line uttered by Charles Laughton in the 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII
Read Moreused to rebuke an unrealistic conditional—USA, 1808: ‘if my aunt had been my uncle, what would have been her gender?’—France, 1843: ‘si ma tante était un homme, ça serait mon oncle’ (‘if my aunt were a man, that would be my uncle’)
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UK, 1877—an onion-seller from Brittany who sold onions door-to-door around the coasts of Britain—used with modifying word, ‘Johnny’ designates a person of the type, profession, etc., specified
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USA, 1938: painted by teenagers on the dilapidated old cars they drove—Australia, 1948: painted on cars, too, but, apparently, not specifically by teenagers—later, on bumper stickers
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word histories 