‘like a duck takes to water’: meaning and origin
easily, readily—UK, 1825
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‘wouldn’t give you a fright if he/she was a ghost’: meaning and early occurrences
is used of a miserly person—Australia, 1929—UK, 1934
Read More‘spud-cocky’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1911—a potato farmer—composed of ‘spud’ (a potato) and ‘cocky’ (a farmer working a small-scale farm)—‘cocky’: shortened form of ‘cockatoo’ (a farmer working a small-scale farm)
Read More‘Ma State’: meaning and origin
the State of New South Wales—Australia, 1905—alludes to New South Wales as the ‘mother’ colony, i.e., the first colony that Britain founded in Australia—hence (1908) ‘Ma Stater’, a native or inhabitant of New South Wales
Read More‘monkey see, monkey do’: meaning and origin
is used to comment contemptuously on an instance of unthinking imitation, or of learning or performing by rote—USA, 1889—apparently first used by Californian retailers
Read More‘on the wrong tram’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1929—mistaken, astray, following the wrong tactics
Read More‘tarpaulin muster’: meaning and origin
the collecting of a pool of money, to be used either to provide assistance to some (other) person(s) or cause, or to buy drinks for the contributors—USA, 1863—nautical origin: such funds were originally collected by having the ship’s crew drop their money onto a tarpaulin
Read More‘to paint someone into a corner’: meanings and origin
USA, 1929: to force someone into a situation from which it is not easy to escape—the image is of someone who is painting a floor and ends up in a corner of the room with wet paint all around them (USA, 1913)
Read More‘pound shop’: meanings and origin
UK & Ireland—a shop that sells a wide range of goods at low prices, typically one pound or less—hence also: of the type or quality found in a pound shop, cheap, second-rate
Read More‘knocker-up’ (a wakener-up)
Ireland & Britain, 1850—a person who goes round the streets in the early morning to awaken factory hands—from ‘to knock somebody up’, meaning ‘to awaken somebody by knocking at the door’
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word histories 