‘a cold day in July’ | ‘a cold day in hell’
USA—‘a cold day in July’ 1881—‘a cold day in hell’ 1906—those phrases refer to an impossibly distant time or to an extremely unlikely scenario
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‘Hughie’ (Australian usage): meanings and origin
1906—a familiar name jocularly given to a fanciful deity reputed to be in command of the weather—especially occurs in the phrase ‘send it down, Hughie!’, used to ask that deity to send the rain down from the heavens—also, in the surfers’ lingo: the god of the waves
Read More‘as busy as a one-armed taxi-driver with crabs’ and other colourful phrases
There have been, since the early 20th century a number of colourful variants of the U.S. phrase ‘as busy as a one-armed paperhanger’—for example, in Australian English, ‘as busy as a one-armed taxi-driver with crabs’ and ‘as busy as a brickie in Beirut’.
Read More‘giggle-house’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1919—a psychiatric asylum—seems to have originated in the slang of the armed forces during the First World War
Read More‘all over the place like a mad woman’s [+ noun]’
Australia, 1932—a humorous extension of ‘all over the place’, which means: (literally) everywhere, in every direction, widely scattered; (figuratively) in a confused or disorganised state
Read More‘to live on the smell of an oil rag’: meaning and early occurrences
to live in conditions of extreme want—Australia, 1832; Ireland and Britain, 1834; USA, 1846—in early use, the phrase frequently occurs in relation to Ireland and to the armed forces
Read More‘parting shot’ | ‘Parthian shot’
‘parting shot’ (1817); ‘Parthian shot’ (1822): a sharp, telling remark, act, gesture, etc., made in departing—‘parting shot’: literally the final shot fired at the moment of departure—‘Parthian shot’: refers to the Parthian horsemen’s habit of shooting arrows backwards while in real or pretended retreat
Read Morean Australian use of ‘boots under the bed’
has been used to denote evidence of a de facto relationship affecting a woman’s eligibility for Social-Security benefits—refers to past practices of field officers inspecting homes and bedrooms
Read More‘to be a box of birds’: meaning and origin
Australia and New Zealand, 1939—to be in good spirits, ‘chirpy’—the image is of a boxful of chirping birds (cf. the extended form ‘happy as a bird in a box of birdseed’)—New-Zealand variant ‘to be a box of fluffy ducks’, also ‘to be a box of fluffies’
Read More‘to send a boy to do a man’s work’: meaning and origin
USA, 1856—to ask someone young, ill-equipped or inexperienced to do difficult or complicated work—this phrase usually occurs in negative contexts, especially as ‘never send a boy to do a man’s work’
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