‘soft Mick’: meaning and origin
Lancashire, England, 1939—used in similative and comparative phrases such as ‘as —— as soft Mick’ and ‘more —— than soft Mick’, the noun ‘soft Mick’ (also ‘Soft Mick’) indicates a great quantity or degree
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‘sly grog’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1825—liquor sold without a licence—here, the adjective ‘sly’ means ‘secret’, ‘covert’, ‘clandestine’
Read Morethe various meanings of ‘razor gang’
a violent street gang armed with razors—in extended use, a group or body responsible for making cutbacks—in particular: 1) (British English, railway slang): a team of investigators seeking ways of improving economy and productivity; 2) (Australian English) a parliamentary committee charged with investigating and reducing government spending
Read More‘a rat with a gold tooth’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1972—a person, usually a man, who, in spite of a superficial smartness, is untrustworthy—‘rat’ refers to a deceitful or disloyal man—the image is that, despite the gold tooth, a rat’s basic nature cannot change
Read More‘to treat with ignore’: meaning and early occurrences
Australia, 1935—meaning: ‘to deliberately ignore someone’s presence, request, etc.’—has erroneously been said to have originated in army slang during the Second World War
Read More‘white ants’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1879—With reference to the supposed destruction of the brain by white ants (i.e., termites), the plural noun ‘white ants’ is used of loss of sanity, sense or intelligence. (The singular noun ‘white ant’ occasionally occurred in early use.)
Read More‘to jump one’s horse over the bar’: meaning and origin
The obsolete Australian-English phrase to jump one’s horse over the bar, and its variants, meant to sell a horse for liquor. The following definition is from an unpublished manuscript entitled Materials for a dictionary of Australian Slang, collected from 1900 to 1910, by Alfred George Stephens and S. J. O’Brien—as quoted by Gerald Alfred Wilkes (1927-2020) in A […]
Read More‘horror stretch’: meanings and origin
Australia—1954: a very unpleasant experience—originally, 1953: a particularly rough stretch of road on the 6,500-mile round-Australia Redex Reliability Trial of August-September 1953—hence, 1953: any particularly rough stretch of road
Read More‘cakeage’: meanings and origin
Australia, 1985—Coined after ‘corkage’, the noun ‘cakeage’ denotes, in a restaurant, the cutting and serving of a cake that has been brought in by a customer from off the premises, hence also a charge levied for this service.
Read More‘blue-sky talk’ | ‘blue-sky research’
USA—‘blue-sky talk’ 1900—‘blue-sky research’ 1947—the adjective ‘blue-sky’ is used to mean: (in negative sense) fanciful, hypothetical; (in positive sense) creative or visionary—from the notion of a blue sky as a place free from disturbances or difficulties
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