“ad fontes!”
Australia, 1863—originally referred to any chain of communications by which bushrangers were warned of police movements—soon extended to any rapid informal network by which information, rumour, gossip, etc., is spread
Read Morethe three traditional interests of the stereotypical New-Zealand man—but also applied to both sexes—1962 or 1963 as the title and in the lyrics of a song by the New-Zealand singer-songwriter Rod Derrett
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Australia, 1953—slogan used by opponents of nuclear weapons—also used in New Zealand
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Australia and New Zealand 1913—alludes to horse racing, in which a horse wins a race by being the first to pass the finishing post
Read Morefrom 1857 onwards in Australian newspapers, but apparently of Irish-English origin—the forename ‘Larry’ was probably chosen as a jocular reinforcement, a variant reduplication, of the adjective ‘happy’
Read Morefrom army use on the Western Front during World War One: ‘cootie’, ‘body louse’, ‘cooty’, ‘infested with lice’, ‘coot’, ‘louse’, probably ultimately refer to the aquatic bird called ‘coot’, reputed to be lice-infested
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UK, 1930s—from Cold Comfort Farm (1932), by Stella Gibbons, in which a character exploits a traumatic childhood experience to exert control over her family
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word histories 