“ad fontes!”
to put someone in a difficult, vulnerable or compromising situation, especially by exposing them to blame—USA, 1945, sports—the image is of suspending wet washing in the open so that it can dry
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alludes to the belief that such a hat or cap protects the wearer from mind control, surveillance or similar types of threat—USA, 1972 as ‘tinfoil-lined hat’
Read MoreUK—anything which discourages or inhibits sexual activity—originally (1943, British military slang): the sturdy, practical and unattractive underwear issued to female service personnel
Read Moreto have sexual intercourse—USA, second half of the 20th century—here, the noun ‘salami’ denotes the penis
Read MoreUK, 1971—a pun on ‘Kensington Gore’, the name of a thoroughfare in London, and on the noun ‘gore’, denoting blood shed from a wound—it is unclear whether ‘Kensington Gore’ (as applied to artificial blood) was originally a trademark
Read Morea tall person—Australia, 1968, in the stage play Norm and Ahmed, by Alexander Buzo—gained currency from occurring in the film Gallipoli (1981), scripted by David Williamson
Read MoreAustralia—also ‘to bang like a shithouse door’—used of an exceptional sexual partner—plays on two meanings of the verb ‘bang’: ‘to make a loud noise’ and ‘to have sexual intercourse’
Read MoreAustralia, 1972—a jocular curse—the Australian National Dictionary Centre explains that this phrase “recalls an earlier time when many Australians kept chooks (domestic chickens) in the backyard and the dunny was a separate outhouse”
Read MoreUSA, 1957, teenagers’ slang—to worry about trivial, insignificant matters—usually as ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’, said as reproof or consolation
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Australia, 1954—derogatory nickname for the metal eagle at the top of the Australian-American Memorial in Canberra—alludes to the fact that, from a distance, the eagle’s upswept wings look like a rabbit’s ears
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word histories 