‘mauvais coucheur’: meaning and origin

a difficult, uncooperative or unsociable person—UK, 1829—from French ‘mauvais coucheur’, literally ‘bad bedfellow’, with original allusion to a person whom a traveller had to share a bed with when stopping over at an inn

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‘Bloody Caesar’: meaning and origin

a drink consisting of vodka and Clamato juice—Canada, 1969—coined after ‘Bloody Mary’—this drink is said to have been invented by bartender Walter Chell

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notes on ‘wave’ (i.e., crowd motion)

USA, 1981—said to have been invented by cheerleader ‘Krazy George’—popularised worldwide during the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, as a translation of Spanish ‘ola’—hence the British phrase ‘Mexican wave’ (1986)

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‘Mexican overdrive’: meaning and origin

the practice of coasting downhill in a motor vehicle, with the engine disengaged—USA, 1949, lorry-drivers’ slang—one of the phrases in which ‘Mexican’ denotes basic devices or processes compared unfavourably with more advanced equivalents

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