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
Read MoreUK, 1785—has been used to address a red-haired person—sometimes followed by the retort ‘there’s enough water in yours to put it out’ and variants
Read MoreUK—1879 “where the monkey put the shells”—1892 “where the monkey put the nuts”—with reference to the anus, this slang phrase expresses contemptuous rejection
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reluctance to attend school or work, or a reduction in working efficiency, experienced on a Monday morning—UK and USA, 1908; Australia, 1910—the suffix ‘-itis’ is applied to a state of mind or tendency fancifully regarded as a disease
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derisive appellation given to Australian Rules (football), because the ball is often kicked high into the air, requiring players to leap and catch it—Australia, 1945—slang of the Australian armed forces during World War II
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state of South Australia, 1952—a traffic warden—from the fact that South Australian traffic wardens licked the adhesive parking tickets in order to stick them to the windscreens—hence also the verb ‘sticker-lick’
Read MoreUK, 1835—said to a person that the speaker does not wish to see again—refers to Bath, a spa in south-western England, where one goes to take the waters
Read MoreUK, 1883—a gesture of derision made by putting one’s thumb to one’s nose and outspreading the fingers like a fan; can be intensified by joining the tip of the little finger to the thumb of the other hand, whose fingers are also outspread fanwise—the motivation for the choice of ‘Queen Anne’ is unknown
Read MoreUSA, 1937, as a wrestling term—an act of placing both hands on a person’s wrist or arm and then twisting it to produce a burning sensation—alludes to the fiendish methods of torture attributed to the ‘(Red) Indians’
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UK, 1956, children’s slang—an act of placing both hands on a person’s wrist or arm and then twisting it to produce a burning sensation—alludes to the fiendish methods of torture attributed to the Chinese
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