“ad fontes!”
literally (1845): an enclosure in which calves are isolated from their mothers until weaned—figuratively, humorously and offensively (1885): a girls’ boarding-school—similar to the use of ‘cow’ to derogatorily designate a girl or woman
Read Morerefers to a person who is ignorant or dismissive of the hardships of others—alludes to the phrase “let them eat cake”, attributed to Marie Antoinette, wife of King of France Louis XVI
Read MoreUSA—1941 (slang of the Marines): a state of disorder or confusion—1959 (High-School slang): a prank in which the occupants of a vehicle which has temporarily come to a stop must jump out, run around the vehicle and get back in
Read Morea social occasion where the host gets drunk at an earlier time than the guests—1682?—one of several expressions in which the adjective ‘Dutch’ is used derogatorily or derisively
Read Moreslang, disparaging: a person of small stature—from 1677 onwards in bilingual dictionaries (English-French and French-English) by Guy Miege
Read MoreUSA, 1858—any man—often in contexts in which a person, especially a woman, is disparagingly characterised as sexually promiscuous or indiscriminate
Read Morea person who behaves as if he or she knows everything—UK, colloquial, 1860—the irony of the expression lies in the fact that clogs are mere functional pedestrian objects
Read Moredominated by a woman or by women—UK, 1809—past participle of ‘ride’, ‘ridden’ combines with nouns to form adjectives meaning: afflicted, affected or dominated by something or by someone specified
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UK, 1951—‘mother-in-law’s chair’, ‘mother-in-law’s cushion’ and ‘mother-in-law’s seat’ are colloquial appellations for the globular spiny cactus Echinocactus grusonii, native to Mexico
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an uncovered extra seat at the back or on the side of a two-seater motor car—USA, 1907
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