‘fang-farrier’: meaning and origin
a dentist—World War Two—slang of the British armed forces—was soon adopted into (and came to be regarded as) Australian English—earlier synonyms: ‘fang-faker’ and ‘fang-wrencher’
Read MoreTag: medicine
‘churchyard cough’: meaning and origin
UK, 1677—a bad cough indicative of impending death—with allusion to the churchyard as the site of burial, ‘churchyard’ has been used attributively of something indicative of, or associated with, (impending) death
Read More‘morning, noon and night’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1741—all day, incessantly—also, in early use, ‘morn, noon and night’—different from the juxtaposition of the nouns ‘morning’, ‘noon’ and ‘night’, which refers to an action taking place first in the morning, then at noon, and finally at night
Read More‘loony doctor’: meaning and origin
from 1924 onwards in stories by English author P. G. Wodehouse—a facetious appellation for a medical practitioner specialising in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness—‘loony’: shortened form of ‘lunatic’
Read More‘the men in (the) white coats’: meaning and origin
USA, 1936—psychiatrists or psychiatric workers—refers to the traditional use of white coats by medical personnel—often used in the stereotypical image of a mentally-disordered person being borne away to a psychiatric hospital by psychiatric workers
Read More‘kangaroo care’: meaning and origin
USA, 1990—a method of caring for a premature newborn in which a parent holds the infant on their chest in skin-to-skin contact—from the fact that kangaroos give birth to still-developing foetuses, then nurse them in their pouches
Read More‘different strokes for different folks’: meaning and origin
African-American, 1966—different things please or satisfy different people—‘stroke’ denotes a comforting gesture of approval or congratulation, and, by extension, a flattering or friendly remark
Read More‘wouldn’t work in an iron lung’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1953—used of an extremely lazy person—refers to the artificial respirator that kept polio patients alive by “breathing” for them
Read More‘the birds and the bees’: meaning and early occurrences
USA, 1936—the facts about sexual reproduction, especially as explained to a child—when this phrase appeared, ‘birds’ and ‘bees’ had long been commonly paired in literary allusions
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
word histories 