‘up to dolly’s wax’: meanings and origin
Australia, 1909—to the greatest possible extent; sated with food—dolls used to have modelled wax heads with a neck shaped so that it could be sewn to a stuffed rag body
Read More‘like a Bondi tram’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1940—means ‘speedily’—refers to the tram service between Sydney, New South Wales, and Bondi Beach, a popular beach located 4 miles east of Sydney city centre
Read More‘Fiji uncle’: meaning and early occurrences
Australia, 1888—defined by Wilkes in A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (1990) as “An imaginary rich uncle overseas, backing some venture in which the unwary may be persuaded to invest.”
Read More‘paper yabber’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1888—denotes a letter (i.e., a written message)—‘yabber’: as a noun, denotes speech, language, talk; as a verb, means to talk—from an aboriginal stem ‘ya’, meaning to speak
Read Morea theatrical phrase: ‘it will be all right at night’
British English, 1843—The theatrical phrase it will be (or it will come) all right at night (or all right on the night) means the opening night will go well.
Read More‘“Hell!” said the duchess’: meanings and origin
originated (1915) as the jocular beginning, destined to grip the reader’s attention, of a hypothetical novel or short story—soon (1919) came to be also used either without precise meaning or as a jocular exclamation
Read More‘wogs begin at Calais’: meaning and origin
1947—is used to express an attitude of insularity and hostility to foreigners attributed to the British—a shortening of ‘golliwog’, the derogatory and offensive noun ‘wog’ designates a non-white person
Read More‘if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium’: meaning and origin
title of a CBS television documentary first broadcast in 1966—came to be used derogatorily of any fast package-tour—gave rise to the pattern ‘(if) it’s Tuesday, this (or it) must be ——’, used of travel anywhere
Read More‘singing milkshake’: meaning and origin
1979—nickname given, in particular, to singer Olivia Newton-John—alludes to the type of popular music that (like a milkshake) is discarded as soon as it has been consumed
Read More‘gone on the padre’s bike’: meaning and early occurrences
reply to any request for somebody’s whereabouts—Australia, 1944: slang of the Australian armed forces during WWII—original meaning: absent without leave
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