“ad fontes!”
soldiers regarded simply as material to be expended in war—‘cannon fodder’ (1847), said to have been coined after German ‘Kanonenfutter’—French ‘chair à canon’ (1814), first used in reference to Napoléon Bonaparte
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slang—(used especially of women) lustful; sexually aroused or arousing—first recorded in The Confession of the New Married Couple (London, 1683)
Read Morealso ‘no joy without annoy’—meaning: there is a trace of trouble or difficulty in every pleasure—was already a common proverb in the late sixteenth century
Read MoreAustralia, 1927—alteration of ‘blanc’ in French ‘vin blanc’ (‘white wine’)—via rhyming slang forms such as ‘plinketty-plonk’, from phrases such as ‘vin blank’ in the slang of soldiers stationed in France during WWI
Read MoreParticularly in Australian English, with reference to the phrase ‘not to care a bugger’, meaning ‘not to care at all’, the noun ‘imbuggerance’, also ‘embuggerance’, denotes ‘absolute indifference’.
Read Moresomething of no value, something to which one is utterly indifferent—UK, 1785—derives from a misinterpretation of “Worth makes the Man, and Want of it the Fellow;/The rest, is all but Leather or Prunella.” in An Essay on Man (1734), by Alexander Pope
Read Moreinterjection used to suggest that something can be done or understood with no difficulty—UK, 2009—from the catchword uttered by Aleksandr Orlov, an animated Russian meerkat, in a television advertising campaign for comparethemarket.com
Read More18th century—used humorously and ironically to denote old news, usually with the implication that the person whom the speaker is referring to is simply stating the obvious or restating a well-worn or accepted truth
Read MoreAustralia, 1834—used in various phrases, in particular as a type of someone or something in a very bad state or condition—also in the phrase ‘all behind like Barney’s bull’, meaning ‘very delayed’ or ‘backward’—origin unknown
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’
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