‘doesn’t buy (the) groceries’: meaning and early occurrences
USA, 1911—is applied to an act or activity that brings in no money—is often preceded by the third-person singular pronoun ‘it’
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‘to be all hat and no cattle’: meanings and origin
USA, 1937—to have or cultivate a particular image or reputation which has no basis in reality; to engage in empty talk—now often thought of as referring to Texans, but originally attributed to Native Americans
Read More‘to sell sand in the Sahara’: meaning and origin
USA, 1907—refers to the supply of something to a place where it is not needed—in particular, ‘could sell sand in the Sahara’ is applied to an efficient salesman, and, by extension, to a persuasive person
Read More‘to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos’: meaning and origin
USA, 1904—refers to the supply of something to a place where it is not needed—in particular, ‘could sell refrigerators to the Eskimos’ is applied to an efficient salesman, and, by extension, to a persuasive person
Read More‘pester power’: meaning and origin
USA, 1979—the children’s ability to pressurise their parents into buying something, or doing something for them, by continuing to ask for it until their parents agree to do it—originally referred to television advertising targeting children
Read More‘up to dolly’s wax’: meanings and origin
Australia, 1909—to the greatest possible extent; sated with food—dolls used to have modelled wax heads with a neck shaped so that it could be sewn to a stuffed rag body
Read More‘Fiji uncle’: meaning and early occurrences
Australia, 1888—defined by Wilkes in A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (1990) as “An imaginary rich uncle overseas, backing some venture in which the unwary may be persuaded to invest.”
Read More‘not to have two yachts to rub together’
applied to a rich person complaining of having insufficient means of existence; to a person who is merely free from financial worry—USA, 1936—coined humorously after ‘not to have two pennies to rub together’
Read More‘Mondayitis’: meaning and early occurrences
reluctance to attend school or work, or a reduction in working efficiency, experienced on a Monday morning—UK and USA, 1908; Australia, 1910—the suffix ‘-itis’ is applied to a state of mind or tendency fancifully regarded as a disease
Read More‘Queen Anne’s fan’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1883—a gesture of derision made by putting one’s thumb to one’s nose and outspreading the fingers like a fan; can be intensified by joining the tip of the little finger to the thumb of the other hand, whose fingers are also outspread fanwise—the motivation for the choice of ‘Queen Anne’ is unknown
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