“ad fontes!”
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
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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 Morea 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 Morein 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)
Read Moresmartly dressed—from the verb ‘fig out/up’, meaning ‘to smarten up’—this verb is probably an alteration of the verb ‘feague’, of uncertain origin, meaning ‘to make (a horse) lively’
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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
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