‘dinnyhayser’: meanings (and origin?)
Australia, 1878—a knockout blow; anything of exceptional size or force—allegedly alludes to a boxer called Dinny Hayes—but no evidence supports this allegation
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‘panier de crabes’: meaning and origin
1942—an arena of fierce or ruthless rivalry—borrowed from French: literally ‘basket of crabs’—the image is of crabs fighting, if not devouring one another, when kept in a basket
Read More‘within a bull’s roar of’: a measure of distance
Australia, 1930—when used negatively, means ‘far away from’; when used affirmatively, means ‘not too far away from’—refers to the fact that a roaring bull can be heard over a great distance
Read More‘boudoir bandicoot’: meaning and origin
Australia—a promiscuous male—coined in 1983, during a parliamentary debate, by Michael Hodgman, then Member of the Australian House of Representatives, to describe Bob Hawke, then Prime Minister of Australia
Read More‘kippers and curtains’: meaning and origin
UK, 1934—used of a person who pretends to be well-off despite having little money—the image is of a person who has expensive curtains on the windows of their house, but subsists on a diet of inexpensive fish
Read More‘to have a tiger by the tail’: meaning and origin
UK, 1826—to find oneself in a situation that has turned out to be difficult to control but cannot be got out of—the image is that someone holding a tiger by the tail can neither keep hold of it nor let go of it with safety
Read More‘to put a tiger in one’s tank’: meaning and origin
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 More‘winedot’: meaning and origin
Australia, 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 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‘rosinback’: meaning and origin
USA, 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
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