“ad fontes!”
to invest one with energy—USA, 1959 & 1960—used as an advertising slogan by both Oklahoma Oil Company and Humble Oil & Refining Company—this advertising slogan soon became a popular catchphrase
Read MoreAustralia, 1933—an addict of cheap wine or/and of methylated spirits—apparently coined jocularly after ‘Wyandotte’, denoting a domestic chicken of a medium-sized American breed
Read More1950—‘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 MoreUSA, 1896, circus slang—a horse used by a bareback rider or acrobat—rosin was rubbed on the horse’s back to prevent the rider or acrobat from slipping
Read Moreused of a person who is frozen with fright or surprise, or is trying to flee, as a result of suddenly becoming the focus of attention—alludes to the habit of deer and rabbits of stopping still when dazzled by the headlights of a motor vehicle, or of running away within the headlight beam
Read Moreto refuse to face up to unpleasant or awkward realities—refers to the practice traditionally attributed to the ostrich of thrusting its head into the sand when being overtaken by pursuers, supposedly through an incapacity to distinguish between seeing and being seen
Read Moreto do or say something which causes trouble, controversy or upset—first occurs (1841 & 1843, Yorkshire, northern England) in quotation marks, which indicates that it was already in common usage
Read More1607, as ‘as snug as pigs in pease-straw’—especially in ‘(as) snug as a bug in a rug’, phrases built on the pattern ‘(as) snug as [animal name] (in —)’ mean ‘in an extremely comfortable position or situation’
Read Moremeaning: ‘what is appropriate in one case is also appropriate in the other case in question’—earliest occurrence in A Collection of English Proverbs (1670), by John Ray
Read MoreUK, 1826—The colloquial phrase ‘couldn’t stop a pig (in a gate)’, and variants, are used of a bow-legged person.
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