UK, 1710—in ease and luxury—refers to the use of clover as fodder, as explained by Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755): “To live in Clover, is to live luxuriously; clover being extremely delicious and fattening to cattle.”
Read MoreUSA, 1876: from beginning to end, completely, exhaustively—literal meaning, 1852: all the successive parts of a meal, from soup at the beginning to nuts at the end
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UK, 1823 as ‘calf’s head is best hot’, defined by John Badcock as “the apology for one of those who made no bones of dining with his topper on” in Slang. A Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon-ton, and the Varieties of Life
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a word or piece of text in which the design and layout of the letters creates a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves—from French ‘calligramme’, coined in 1918 by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire—from ‘calligraphie’ and ‘idéogramme’
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a deliberate malapropism punning on ‘to cast aspersions on’—UK, 1902—nasturtiums are low plants with large round leaves and orange, red or yellow flowers
Read Moreto praise oneself—first used by Benjamin Franklin in 1729—the image is that, when one’s trumpeter is dead, one is forced to find one’s own trumpet
Read Morea person regarded as good-natured but also not ‘bright’ intellectually—UK, 1981—Australia, 1982—USA, 1986
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expresses distrust at air or sea travel—USA, 1926—with a pun on ‘terror’, jocularly decouples from each other the components of ‘terra firma’ (firm land)
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USA, 1951—rhetorical question used ironically as a response to a question or statement felt to be blatantly obvious
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nourish your husband—1882 in ‘Vanity Fair’ (London)—popularised in 1885 by a cartoon by George du Maurier, published in ‘Punch, or the London Charivari’
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