‘to put the toothpaste back in the tube’: meaning and origin

3rd Jun 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

USA, 1925—this phrase refers to the impossibility of reverting a situation to how it formerly existed

‘to play a good knife and fork’: meaning and early occurrences

2nd Jun 2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

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

‘Glasgow kiss’: meaning and origin

1st Jun 2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

UK, 1982—denotes a headbutt—alludes to the reputation for violence accorded to some parts of Glasgow, a city in west-central Scotland

‘the river that flows upside down’: meaning and origin

30th May 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

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

‘dry as a Pommy’s towel’: meaning and origin

29th May 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

Australia, 1981—very dry—alludes to the alleged poor personal hygiene of the British—here, the Australian noun ‘Pommy’ designates a British person

an Australian use of ‘grasshopper’

28th May 2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

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

‘rose-coloured spectacles’: meaning and origin

27th May 2022.Reading time 22 minutes.

UK, 1830—a happy or positive attitude that fails to notice negative things, leading to a view of life that is not realistic

‘to beat Banagher’: meaning and origin

25th May 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

to surpass everything—Ireland, 1821—probably refers to a strong military fort at Banagher, a town in County Offaly, in the province of Leinster, Ireland

‘the clean potato’: meaning and origin

24th May 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

the very, the real, or the proper person or thing—1830—of Scottish or Irish origin—perhaps an extended form of the synonymous phrase ‘the potato’

‘nuppence’: meaning and origin

23rd May 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

no money, nothing—UK, 1864, in a text by the British scholar D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson—from ‘n-’ in the determiner ‘no’, meaning ‘not any’, and ‘-uppence’ in ‘tuppence’