‘not to be able to head a duck’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1890, & New Zealand, 1891—is used, in sports, of slowness, in particular as a disparaging comment on a racehorse
Read MoreTag: New Zealand
‘flat stick’: meaning and origin
New Zealand, 1970—at full speed—perhaps after ‘flat out’ (i.e., with the maximum speed or effort) and after ‘quicksticks’ (i.e., quickly, without delay)
Read More‘sausage-wrapper’ (i.e., a newspaper)
colloquially used as a contemptuous appellation for a newspaper that the speaker regards as downmarket—Australia, 1880—but had occurred once (USA, 1874) as ‘bologna sausage wrapper’
Read More‘on the wrong tram’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1929—mistaken, astray, following the wrong tactics
Read More‘tarpaulin muster’: meaning and origin
the collecting of a pool of money, to be used either to provide assistance to some (other) person(s) or cause, or to buy drinks for the contributors—USA, 1863—nautical origin: such funds were originally collected by having the ship’s crew drop their money onto a tarpaulin
Read More‘green cart’: meaning and early occurrences
the imaginary vehicle supposed to take people to the mental asylum—Australia (1869), New Zealand (1884)—the reason the colour green was chosen is unknown
Read More‘to do a perish(er)’: meaning and origin
to reach, or to be in, a state of extreme privation; to suffer hardship; to die, especially of thirst—New Zealand (miners, 1871) & Australia (1881)
Read More‘like a rat up a drainpipe’: meanings and origin
very quickly; also, very energetically—Australia, 1881, as ‘like a rat up a pump’
Read More‘to stick out a mile’: meaning and origin
New Zealand, 1883, as ‘to stick out half a mile’—to be very prominent or conspicuous
Read More‘to frighten seven bells out of somebody’: meaning and origin
New Zealand (1890) & Australia (1891)—to terrify somebody—probably modelled on the earlier phrase ‘to knock seven bells out of somebody’ (‘to give a severe beating to somebody’)
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