“ad fontes!”
Liverpool, England, 1939—scouse without meat—“from the general early sense of ‘blind’ meaning ‘deficient’” (Liverpool English Dictionary)—‘scouse’, shortened form of ‘lobscouse’: “a dish of hashed meat stewed with potatoes and onions; an Irish stew” (English Dialect Dictionary)
Read More1910—used of a weakling, or of someone or something that is ineffectual—may have originated in Yorkshire, a county of northern England
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UK, 1971—‘jam butty’ (also ‘jam sandwich’): a colloquial appellation for a police patrol car having a red stripe painted on a white background
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‘knuckle-sandwich’ USA, 1940—‘knuckle-butty’ UK, 1972—a punch to the mouth (or to the stomach)—the image is of a sandwich of knuckles being forced into the mouth (or into the stomach) of the person who is punched
Read MoreUK, 1870—a very hard ship’s biscuit—refers to the fact that these sea-biscuits were particularly carried by Liverpool merchant ships; likens the shape and hardness of these sea-biscuits to those of pantiles, i.e. roofing tiles curved to an ogee shape
Read Moreislands of the South Pacific, 1881—cattle, beef, and, by extension, meat of any kind and tinned meat—a combination of the nouns ‘bull’ and ‘cow’
Read MoreUSA—‘in mothballs’ (1892): in a state or period of inactivity, disuse, reserve, storage or postponement—‘out of mothballs’ (1905): back into activity, into use
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USA, 1956—denotes a core principle, value, belief, characteristic, aspect, etc., of the U.S.A. or its citizens—more generally, the nouns ‘motherhood’ and ‘apple pie’ have been juxtaposed in enumerations of things and persons exemplifying U.S. values
Read More1687—used in negative and interrogative constructions, ‘bread and butter’ denotes a matter which one has the right to express an opinion on, involve oneself in, etc.
Read MoreUK—literally, 1919: a dish consisting of meat served with two varieties of vegetable, seen as typical of traditional or unimaginative British cooking—figuratively, 1951: something simple and unsophisticated, or something indicative of simple and unsophisticated tastes
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word histories 