“ad fontes!”
UK, 1941—a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force; also used by the military land forces of any member of the R.A.F.—originally referred to WWII advertisements for Brylcreem hair cream, featuring a fighter pilot
Read MoreUK—anything which discourages or inhibits sexual activity—originally (1943, British military slang): the sturdy, practical and unattractive underwear issued to female service personnel
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a cheap suit of clothes; a (cut-price) tailoring business—UK, 1920, informal—refers to Harry Mallaby-Deeley (1863-1937), a Member of Parliament who opened a cut-price tailoring business in 1920
Read MoreUK, 1976—the colloquial phrase ‘early doors’ means ‘early on’, ‘at an early stage’—frequently occurs in the context of football—of unknown origin
Read MoreUK, 1930—used of a man who pretends to be well-off despite having little money—the image is of a man of limited means who spends what he has on smart clothes, and therefore cannot afford any breakfast
Read MoreUSA, 1959—a very tidy, well-organised person—a blend of the adjective ‘neat’ and of the noun ‘beatnik’—originally occurred chiefly in contrast to ‘beatnik’
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UK, 1989—refers to Manchester, in north-western England, as a centre of popular music and club subculture in Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s—blend of ‘mad’ and ‘Manchester’
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UK, 1975—an upper-class and fashionable, but conventional, young woman in London—blend of ‘Sloane Square’, the name of a square located in an affluent area of London, and ‘Lone Ranger’, the name of a well-known hero of western stories and films
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USA, 1929—UK, 1933—in the phrase ‘a spare tyre around the waistline’, and its variants, the noun ‘spare tyre’ denotes a roll of fat
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1943—‘brothel-creepers’ (also ‘brothel-creeper shoes’ and ‘creepers’): denotes soft-soled shoes—refers to the stealthiness that those shoes permit
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word histories 