USA, 1885—a response to a question that cannot be answered precisely, although a precise answer seems to be expected—various jocular replies have been made up, such as ‘twice the length from the middle to the end
UK, 1828—sleep, especially taken before midnight, assumed to be necessary to keep one looking healthy and attractive; any extra sleep—sleep taken before midnight is popularly thought to be most restful
Australia, 1927—very drunk; sated with food—‘goog’, Australian-English slang for an egg, was perhaps formed on the sense of ‘gog’ in ‘goosgog’, denoting a gooseberry
Australia, 1966—typically Australian in character—alteration of the phrase ‘as American as apple pie’, with reference to the prominence of meat pie in Australian diet
Since the mid-20th century, with reference to garden tea parties, the phrase ‘cucumber sandwiches on the lawn’ and its variants have been used to characterise traditional Englishness.
USA, 1904—refers to the supply of something to a place where it is not needed—in particular, ‘could sell refrigerators to the Eskimos’ is applied to an efficient salesman, and, by extension, to a persuasive person
1941 in the sense ‘under the influence of alcohol’—aided by the phonetic similarity of ‘grip’ and ‘grape’, this phrase has, in the course of time, been coined on separate occasions by various persons, independently from one another
Australia, 1909—to the greatest possible extent; sated with food—dolls used to have modelled wax heads with a neck shaped so that it could be sewn to a stuffed rag body
‘nothingburger’: a person or thing of no importance, value or substance—‘mouseburger’: a young woman of unexceptional appearance and talents, regarded as timid, dowdy or mousy—from the use of ‘burger’ as the second element in compounds denoting types of hamburger