‘Fremantle doctor’: meaning and origin

28th Oct 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

Australia, 1873—a refreshing sea-breeze that blows into Fremantle and Perth after hot weather, especially in the evening—Fremantle is a port city in Western Australia, near Perth—with reference to the action of an onshore breeze against diseases, ‘doctor’ denotes, in Western Australia and in the West Indies, a cool sea-breeze which usually prevails during part of the day in summer

‘giggle-house’: meaning and origin

27th Oct 2021.Reading time 7 minutes.

Australia, 1919—a psychiatric asylum—seems to have originated in the slang of the armed forces during the First World War

‘all over the place like a mad woman’s [+ noun]’

26th Oct 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

Australia, 1932—a humorous extension of ‘all over the place’, which means: (literally) everywhere, in every direction, widely scattered; (figuratively) in a confused or disorganised state

‘a grape on the business’: meaning and origin

25th Oct 2021.Reading time 8 minutes.

Australia, 1939—someone whose presence spoils things for others; an odd person out—of unknown origin—perhaps a variant of ‘gooseberry’, as in ‘to play gooseberry’—perhaps an alteration of ‘gripe’—perhaps related in some respect to ‘sour grapes’

‘to jump one’s horse over the bar’: meaning and origin

24th Oct 2021.Reading time 14 minutes.

The obsolete Australian-English phrase to jump one’s horse over the bar, and its variants, meant to sell a horse for liquor. The following definition is from an unpublished manuscript entitled Materials for a dictionary of Australian Slang, collected from 1900 to 1910, by Alfred George Stephens and S. J. O’Brien—as quoted by Gerald Alfred Wilkes (1927-2020) in A […]

‘government stroke’: meaning and origin

23rd Oct 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

Australia, 1837—the deliberately slow pace of work characteristic of public-sector workers—originally used of convict labourers—in Australia as a penal colony, unease about the word ‘convict’ led to the creation of euphemistic terms such as ‘government man’ and ‘public servant’

‘horror stretch’: meanings and origin

21st Oct 2021.Reading time 15 minutes.

Australia—1954: a very unpleasant experience—originally, 1953: a particularly rough stretch of road on the 6,500-mile round-Australia Redex Reliability Trial of August-September 1953—hence, 1953: any particularly rough stretch of road

‘Dickless Tracy’: meanings and origin

20th Oct 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

USA, 1963—a female police officer or a female traffic warden—puns on ‘dick’, slang for a man’s penis, and the name of Dick Tracy, a comic-strip detective created in 1931 by the U.S. cartoonist Chester Gould

‘to live on the smell of an oil rag’: meaning and early occurrences

19th Oct 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

to live in conditions of extreme want—Australia, 1832; Ireland and Britain, 1834; USA, 1846—in early use, the phrase frequently occurs in relation to Ireland and to the armed forces

‘to run like a hairy goat’: meanings and origin

17th Oct 2021.Reading time 22 minutes.

Australia, 1912—of a racehorse: to perform very badly—also in extended use and in the opposite sense—from ‘hairy goat’ (1894): a racehorse which performs badly—synonym ‘hairy dog’ (1908)