‘may your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down’

27th Jul 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

Australia, 1972—a jocular curse—the Australian National Dictionary Centre explains that this phrase “recalls an earlier time when many Australians kept chooks (domestic chickens) in the backyard and the dunny was a separate outhouse”

the noun ‘dunny’ in Australian phrases

26th Jul 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

The noun ‘dunny’ denotes a toilet, especially an outside toilet. This noun has been used in various phrases expressing notions such as conspicuousness, loneliness, ill luck, etc.

‘if it should rain pottage, he would want his dish’ and variants

25th Jul 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

The proverbial phrase ‘if it should rain pottage, he would want his dish’, and its many variants, are used of a person who is characterised by bad luck or by an inability to be organised or prepared.

‘Socceroo’: meaning and origin

23rd Jul 2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

(plural) the Australian men’s national soccer team; (singular) a member of this team—originated in 1972 as the name of the mascot of the Australian men’s national soccer team, created for the 1974 FIFA World Cup

‘the sharpest —— in the ——’: meaning and early occurrences

22nd Jul 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

The adjective ‘sharp’ is colloquially used in the superlative, in various phrases of the form ‘not the sharpest —— in the ——’, indicating that a person is not very intelligent or perceptive, especially in comparison to others.

‘you’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself’: meaning and early occurrences

21st Jul 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

UK, 1866—used as an observation, a reproof or a warning implying over-cleverness—plays on two meanings of the adjective ‘sharp’: a) literal meaning: ‘cutting’; b) figurative meaning: ‘keen-witted’

‘piano player in a brothel’: meaning and early occurrences

20th Jul 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

used of a person who is implicated in an activity but accepts no responsibility for it—it was used in particular during the Watergate scandal by Senator William Saxbe to characterise President Richard Nixon

‘Pharaoh’s Revenge’: meaning and origin

19th Jul 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

diarrhoea suffered by travellers, especially in Egypt—USA, 1973—does not seem to have been coined after the synonymous ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’—may somehow allude to the legendary curse of the pharaohs

‘gyppy tummy’: meaning and origin

18th Jul 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

diarrhoea suffered by travellers, especially in Egypt—1915, British Army—the word ‘gyppy’ is from ‘gyp’ in ‘Egyptian’, and the suffix ‘-y’, used to form familiar diminutives

‘to shoot the cat’: meaning (and origin?)

17th Jul 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

to vomit, especially from drunkenness—slang, obsolete—UK, 1785—perhaps alludes to the fact that cats are prone to vomit—cf. also the obsolete French verb ‘renarder’, to vomit, from the noun ‘renard’, denoting a fox