Tag: Australia

‘babyccino’: meanings and origin

.Reading time 7 minutes.

a drink of frothy milk, designed as an alternative to coffee for young children—also: a small cup of cappuccino—Australia, 1995—from ‘baby’ and ‘‑ccino’ in ‘cappuccino’

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‘not on your nelly’: meaning and origin

.Reading time 17 minutes.

‘not under any circumstances’—Royal Air Force slang, 1942—short for ‘not on your Nelly Duff’, i.e., ‘not on your life’, ‘Nelly Duff’ being rhyming slang for ‘puff’ as used colloquially in the sense of ‘life’

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‘Jeeves-like’: meaning and origin

.Reading time 11 minutes.

Canada, 1928—resembling Jeeves, the perfect valet in stories by the English author Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975); this fictional character first appeared in 1915

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‘to do a vanishing act’: meanings and origin

.Reading time 20 minutes.

late 19th century—to disappear suddenly without leaving information about one’s whereabouts—from conjuring, in which ‘vanishing act’ designates an act of making a person or thing disappear as if by magic, and an act of disappearing in this manner

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‘dillbrain’: meaning and origin

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Australia, 1943—a foolish or silly person—from the synonymous noun ‘dill’ (1933), itself apparently a back-formation from the adjective ‘dilly’, meaning ‘foolish’, ‘silly’

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‘slanguist’: meanings and origin

.Reading time 15 minutes.

USA, 1871: a person who frequently uses or coins slang words and phrases—USA, 1926: a person who studies the use and historical development of slang—blend of the nouns ‘slang’ and ‘linguist’

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