‘cahoot’: meaning and early occurrences
southern United States of America, 1827—used almost exclusively in the phrase ‘in cahoots’ (in early use ‘in cahoot’, ‘in cohoot’), meaning colluding or conspiring together secretly—origin unknown
Read MoreTag: dictionaries
‘in the pudding club’: meaning and origin
UK, 1890—pregnant—refers to “the bulging puddinglike appearance of a pregnant woman”
Read More‘wouldn’t work in an iron lung’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1953—used of an extremely lazy person—refers to the artificial respirator that kept polio patients alive by “breathing” for them
Read More‘better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick’
British and Irish English, 1833—denotes qualified pleasure—also: ‘to give [someone] a poke in the eye (with a — stick)’, meaning to deprecate [someone]—from ‘a poke in the eye’, denoting something undesirable
Read More‘a Jap on Anzac Day’: meanings and origin
Australia, 1973—used of anything that is absolutely unacceptable, and of any disagreeable situation or experience—‘Jap’: derogatory shortening of ‘Japanese’—Anzac Day: commemoration of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915
Read Morenotes on the phrase ‘lorem ipsum’
a sample text beginning with ‘lorem ipsum’, based on jumbled elements from Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum—‘lorem ipsum’: arbitrary clipping of the first syllable of ‘dolorem ipsum’ in Cicero’s text
Read More‘to laugh like a drain’: meaning and origin
UK, 1935—to laugh loudly and coarsely—alludes to the sound of water gurgling down a drain
Read More‘fair-weather friend’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1685—a person who is friendly only when it is easy or convenient to be so, whose friendship cannot be relied on in times of difficulty
Read More‘to recharge one’s batteries’: meaning and origin
USA, 1890—to regain one’s energy by resting after a period of exertion—the image is of restoring an electric charge to a battery
Read More‘(as) full as a goog’: meanings and early occurrences
Australia, 1927—very drunk; sated with food—‘goog’, Australian-English slang for an egg, was perhaps formed on the sense of ‘gog’ in ‘goosgog’, denoting a gooseberry
Read More
word histories 