‘home (away) from home’: meaning and origin
a place where one is as happy, relaxed or comfortable as in one’s own home; especially a place providing homelike accommodation or amenities—UK, 1839, in advertisements for hotels
Read MoreTag: food
‘can eat an apple through a picket fence’ and variants
used of a buck-toothed person—USA, 1933, as ‘can eat an apple through a picket fence’—USA, 1950, as ‘can eat an apple through a tennis racquet’—UK, 1979, as ‘can eat an apple through a letter box’
Read More‘to be past one’s sell-by date’: meaning and origin
UK, 1985—to be ‘stale’, to be no longer innovative, relevant, or effective—refers to the practice introduced in Britain in the early 1970s of stamping perishable goods with the latest date by which they may be sold
Read More‘Spy Wednesday’: meaning and origin
Ireland, 1809—the Wednesday before Easter—refers to the day on which Judas Iscariot formed the intent to betray Jesus—‘spy’ denotes ‘one who spies upon, or watches, a person or persons secretly’, because, from Wednesday onwards, Judas Iscariot secretly sought an opportunity to deliver Jesus to the Jewish authorities
Read More‘a sprat to catch a mackerel’: meaning and origin
1747—a small outlay or risk ventured in the hope or expectation of a significant return—a metaphor from fishing, in which sprats are used as bait to catch larger fish—in early use with the words ‘salmon’ and ‘herring’ instead of ‘mackerel’
Read More‘Ruby Murray’: meaning and origin
UK, 1983—‘Ruby Murray’, the name of a Northern-Irish singer (1935-1996), is rhyming slang for the noun ‘curry’, denoting a dish of meat, vegetables, etc., cooked in an Indian-style sauce of hot-tasting spices and typically served with rice.
Read More‘butty’: meanings and origin
Northern England—a filled or open sandwich—originally (1827): a slice of bread spread with butter—composed of ‘butt-’, from the noun ‘butter’, and the suffix ‘-y’, forming diminutive nouns
Read More‘savoury duck’: meaning and origin
Lancashire, England, 1833—a faggot, a meatball, “a compound of onions, flour, and small pieces of pork” (The Liverpool Echo, 20 August 1880)—probably one of the common dishes humorously named after daintier items of food
Read More‘blind scouse’: meaning and origin
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 More‘couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding’: meaning and origin
1910—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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