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 MoreAustralia, 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 MoreAustralia, 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.”
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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’
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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 MoreUK, 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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1966—With punning allusion to the high cost of living in that affluent harbourside suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Double Bay is colloquially referred to as ‘Double Pay’.
Read MoreAustralia, 1900: rabbit meat—later also: rabbits—‘mutton’, denoting a choice meat, was derisively substituted for ‘rabbit’, denoting the inferior meat that had to be eaten when butcher’s meat was too costly
Read MoreAustralia—to test somebody’s fortitude; to put pressure on somebody—coined in 1983 by Neville Wran, Premier of New South Wales, to characterise the inexperience of Nick Greiner, the newly elected Leader of the Opposition
Read MoreIrish English, 1834—extremely cold, literally (i.e., with reference to low temperatures) and figuratively (i.e., with reference to lack of feeling, of emotion)
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