“ad fontes!”
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 Morea 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
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