‘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
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‘jean-age’, ‘jean-ager’ and jean-aged’: meaning and origin
refer to the teenage years regarded as an age at which jeans are often worn—USA, from 1946 onwards—punningly after, respectively, ‘teenage’, ‘teenager’ and ‘teenaged’
Read More‘Deirdre spectacles’: meaning and origin
UK, 1981—a pair of spectacles with an oversized frame of a style that was fashionable in the 1980s—refers to the spectacles worn by Deirdre Barlow, a fictional character in the soap opera Coronation Street
Read More‘crème de la crème’: meaning and origin
UK, 1839—France, 1843—the best people in a group, or the best type of a particular thing—a borrowing from French ‘crème de la crème’, literally ‘cream of the cream’
Read More‘lunatic fringe’: meanings and origin
USA, 1913: a minority group regarded as eccentric, extremist or fanatical, or simply stupid—but originally, USA, 1874: a woman or girl’s hairstyle in which the front is cut straight and square across the forehead
Read More‘idiot fringe’: meanings and origin
USA, 1927: a minority group regarded as eccentric, extremist or fanatical, or simply stupid—but originally, UK, 1873: a woman or girl’s hairstyle in which the front is cut straight and square across the forehead
Read More‘monokini’: meaning, origin and early occurrences
a woman’s topless swimsuit, consisting of the lower half of a bikini—from the prefix ‘mono-’ and ‘-kini’ in ‘bikini’, reinterpreted as containing the prefix ‘bi-’—coined in 1946 by French clothing designer Louis Réard
Read More‘blockbuster’: meanings and origin
USA, 1942: a large aerial bomb that can destroy a whole block of buildings—USA, 1942: a thing of enormous impact, power or size
Read More‘Gallic shrug’: meaning and origin
a gesture (made by a French person to deny responsibility, knowledge or agreement) consisting typically in shrugging one’s shoulders while upturning one’s hands
Read More‘blouson noir’: meaning and origin
in French contexts: a young person, especially a young man, belonging to a youth subculture of the 1950s and 1960s—UK, 1959—from the noun ‘blouson’ (a short jacket) and the adjective ‘noir’ (black)
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