“ad fontes!”
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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UK, 1987—a young man who behaves in an unpleasant or aggressive manner as a result of drinking (typically lager) excessively—lager, a pale beer, is favoured by the young as opposed to the dark, traditional bitter English beer
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the movement of the hand in brushing away flies—first recorded in 1967 in a speech by Fred Chaney, Member of the Australian House of Representatives—variants: ‘the Queensland salute’; ‘the Barcoo salute’
Read Moredenotes effrontery—‘front’ denotes self-assurance, but the word that follows ‘than’ puns on ‘front’ in the sense of the façade of a building, a long seafront, etc.—also denotes a well-endowed woman, with reference to ‘front’ in the sense of a woman’s bust
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Australia, 1976—nickname of Australian sprinter Debbie Wells (born 1961), who is from Emmaville, in New South Wales—alludes jocularly to ‘express (train)’, denoting a train that stops at few stations and travels quickly
Read MoreAustralia, 1981—used by some Aborigines of those who are considered to have betrayed their Aboriginal identity in order to be accepted into the white Australian society—the image is that (like the coconut, dark on the outside, but white on the inside) those Aboriginal ‘betrayers’ are outwardly black, but inwardly white
Read MoreAustralia, 1830—refers to the Aboriginal belief that light-skinned persons are reincarnations of dead Aborigines—extended forms: ‘jump up white fellow, plenty of sixpence’ and ‘go down blackfellow and jump up whitefellow’
Read MoreUK 1945: ‘as lucky as the pox doctor’s clerk’: very lucky—UK 1954, ‘to look like a pox doctor’s clerk’, Australia 1957, ‘done up like a pox doctor’s clerk’: dressed nattily but in bad taste
Read MoreAustralia, 1902—to be extremely weak or incompetent at fighting; to be completely ineffectual or inept—‘to fight one’s way out of a paper bag’: to accomplish a very easy task
Read MoreAustralia, 1967—Redfern: a train station positioned one stop before Sydney Central Station—British-English regional variations include, in Newcastle upon Tyne: ‘to get out at Gateshead’
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word histories 