‘the big smoke’: meanings and origins
Australian English, 1848: any urban area (said to be of Aboriginal origin)—Irish and British English, 1862: Dublin and London—alludes to smoke as characteristic of an urban area
Read More‘sunstruck bone’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1893—refers to extreme thirst or to extreme dryness—popularised by the Australian short-story writer and balladist Henry Lawson (1867-1922)
Read More‘a thumbnail dipped in tar’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1901—refers to rough penmanship—alludes to Clancy of the Overflow (originally published in The Bulletin, Sydney, on 21st December 1889), by the Australian poet Andrew Barton Paterson
Read More‘the patter of tiny feet’: meanings and origin
1842—The noun ‘patter’ denotes the sound of light footfall, and the phrase ‘the patter of tiny feet’, and its variants, denote the presence of one or several young children, or the imminent birth of a child.
Read More‘to put the toothpaste back in the tube’: meaning and origin
USA, 1925—this phrase refers to the impossibility of reverting a situation to how it formerly existed
Read More‘to play a good knife and fork’: meaning and early occurrences
to eat heartily—first occurs in Augusta Triumphans: Or, The Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe (1728), by Daniel Defoe
Read More‘Glasgow kiss’: meaning and origin
UK, 1982—denotes a headbutt—alludes to the reputation for violence accorded to some parts of Glasgow, a city in west-central Scotland
Read More‘the river that flows upside down’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1944—jocular—denotes the Yarra River, which flows through Melbourne, Victoria—alludes to the brownish colour of this river, the image being that the mud is on the top, not at the bottom, of this river
Read More‘dry as a Pommy’s towel’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1981—very dry—alludes to the alleged poor personal hygiene of the British—here, the Australian noun ‘Pommy’ designates a British person
Read Morean Australian use of ‘grasshopper’
1950—‘grasshopper’ and its shortened form ‘grassy’, typically used in the plural, denote a tourist, especially a visitor to Canberra—the image is that a coachload of tourists is similar to a swarm of grasshoppers
Read More
word histories 