‘my giddy aunt!’: meaning and origin
UK, 1890—the dated jocular exclamations ‘my giddy aunt!’, ‘my sainted aunt!’, etc., express surprise, consternation, etc.—they are extended forms of the exclamation ‘my aunt!’
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‘like a Bondi tram’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1940—means ‘speedily’—refers to the tram service between Sydney, New South Wales, and Bondi Beach, a popular beach located 4 miles east of Sydney city centre
Read More‘gone on the padre’s bike’: meaning and early occurrences
reply to any request for somebody’s whereabouts—Australia, 1944: slang of the Australian armed forces during WWII—original meaning: absent without leave
Read More‘overpaid, overdressed, oversexed and over here’
Australia and U.S.A, 1944—purportedly applied by the British and the Australians to the U.S. soldiers stationed in their respective countries during World War II—British self-deprecating retort: ‘underpaid, underdressed, undersexed and under Eisenhower’
Read More‘tickety-boo’: meaning, early occurrences and origin
UK, 1938—old-fashioned informal British-English adjective meaning ‘in good order’, ‘fine’—origin obscure: perhaps from Hindi ‘ṭhīk hai’ (‘all right’) or from ‘the ticket’ (‘the correct thing’); or it may simply be a purely fanciful formation
Read More‘aerial ping-pong’: meaning and origin
derisive appellation given to Australian Rules (football), because the ball is often kicked high into the air, requiring players to leap and catch it—Australia, 1945—slang of the Australian armed forces during World War II
Read More‘in clover’: meaning and origin of this phrase
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 More‘in more trouble than Speed Gordon’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1938—beset with extraordinary difficulties—refers to Speed Gordon, the Australian name of Flash Gordon, the hero of the eponymous space-opera comic strip first published in 1934
Read More‘things are crook in Tallarook’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1941—used of any adverse situation—based on the rhyme between ‘crook’ (meaning ‘bad’, ‘unpleasant’, ‘unsatisfactory’) and ‘Tallarook’, the name of a town in Victoria—sometimes followed by ‘there’s no work in Bourke’
Read More‘Lady Blamey’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1941—an improvised drinking glass made by slicing the top off a bottle—named after Lady Olga Blamey, wife of General Thomas Blamey
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