meaning and origin of the phrase ‘Punch’s advice—don’t’
from “advice to persons about to marry—don’t”, published in ‘Punch’s Almanack for 1845’ (24 December 1844) by the magazine ‘Punch, or the London Charivari’
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from “advice to persons about to marry—don’t”, published in ‘Punch’s Almanack for 1845’ (24 December 1844) by the magazine ‘Punch, or the London Charivari’
Read MoreUK, 1970s: frequently scrawled on contraceptive-vending devices in public conveniences—reversal of ‘stop me and buy one’, Wall’s Ice Cream advertising slogan
Read Morea joke involving a pun or double entendre opening with ‘but little Audrey just laughed and laughed because she knew’—January 1926, Kansas City Star (Missouri)
Read MoreUSA, 1990s—purveyor of doom, especially agent of death, force of suicide—refers to Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011), U.S. physician and advocate of assisted suicide
Read MoreUSA, 1927—a slip of the tongue by which the speaker reveals an unconscious thought—named after Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Read MoreUSA—1904 (boxing) a weak jaw that is easily broken—1914 (allegorical) preceded by the adjective ‘moral’—1931 (figurative) a vulnerable point—synonym: ‘china chin’
Read More1999—a cold as experienced by a man who is regarded as exaggerating the severity of the symptoms—popularised by British magazine Nuts in 2006
Read MoreUK, 1892—postdates by several years variants such as ‘eat an apple on going to bed, and you will keep the doctor from earning his bread’
Read Morea means of enforcing conformity—Greek mythology: Procrustes was a robber who made his victims fit a bed by either stretching them longer or cutting them shorter
Read MoreUSA, 1868—‘brass tacks’: the nails studded over a coffin, hence figuratively the end of any possibility of deceit, the return to essentials
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