‘beauty sleep’: meanings and origin
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
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‘to chase the dragon’: meaning and origin
to take heroin by heating it and inhaling the fumes, which form a pattern resembling the tail of a dragon—originated in Hong Kong in the 1950s as a translation of Cantonese slang ‘chui lung’, ‘dragon chasing’
Read More‘to laugh like a drain’: meaning and origin
UK, 1935—to laugh loudly and coarsely—alludes to the sound of water gurgling down a drain
Read More‘when push comes to shove’: meaning and origin
USA, 1889—when a situation reaches a critical point and one must commit oneself to an action or decision—the image is of having to shove when mere pushing is ineffective
Read More‘cold turkey’ (as used of a drug addict)
USA, 1917—a method of treating a drug addict by sudden and complete withdrawal of the drug, instead of by a gradual process—alludes to the goose pimples, resembling the skin of a cold turkey, that a person experiences as a side effect of the treatment
Read More‘before one can say Jack Robinson’: meaning and origin
UK, 1763—extremely quickly or suddenly—in all probability, the male forename ‘Jack’, pet form of ‘John’, typifies an ordinary man, and the surname ‘Robinson’ is a generic personal name
Read More‘like a stunned mullet’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1918—dazed and uncomprehending—from the image of a mullet that has been stunned
Read More‘Vaseline Valley’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1982—a stretch of Oxford Street, in Sydney, which is the city’s main gay district—refers to the use of Vaseline to ease anal intercourse, and based on the alliteration in /v/
Read More‘for show and not for blow’ | ‘one for show and one for blow’
19th century—refer to two handkerchiefs, one used as a clothing accessory, the other for blowing the nose—hence, figuratively ‘for display rather than for use’ and ‘one for display and one for use’
Read More‘scarlet letter’: meanings and origin
a representation of the letter A in scarlet cloth which Hester Prynne is condemned to wear in The Scarlet Letter (1850), by Nathaniel Hawthorne—soon came to be used figuratively in the sense of a stigma, a mark of infamy
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