‘anything in trousers’: meaning and origin
USA, 1858—any man—often in contexts in which a person, especially a woman, is disparagingly characterised as sexually promiscuous or indiscriminate
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‘Hob Collingwood’: meaning and early occurrences
in the game of whist: the four of hearts, considered as an unlucky card—southeastern Scotland and northeastern England, early 19th century—origin unknown
Read More‘clever clogs’: meaning and origin
a person who behaves as if he or she knows everything—UK, colloquial, 1860—the irony of the expression lies in the fact that clogs are mere functional pedestrian objects
Read Morenotes on ‘to ghostwrite’ and on ‘ghostwriter’
UK, 1907: ‘to ghostwrite’ (to write a book, an article, etc., for another person, under whose name it is then published—USA, 1908: ‘ghostwriter’ (a person who ghostwrites)
Read More‘woman-ridden’: meaning and early occurrences
dominated by a woman or by women—UK, 1809—past participle of ‘ride’, ‘ridden’ combines with nouns to form adjectives meaning: afflicted, affected or dominated by something or by someone specified
Read Morenotes on the nouns ‘woodpushing’ and ‘woodpusher’
‘woodpushing’: chess-playing, draughts-playing—‘woodpusher’: a chess-player, a draughts-player—refers to the wooden pieces that chess-players and draughts-players move across the board
Read More‘mother-in-law seat’: meaning and origin
an uncovered extra seat at the back or on the side of a two-seater motor car—USA, 1907
Read More‘mother-in-law joke’: meanings and origin
USA, 1874—a joke made at the expense of the joke-teller’s (real or fictitious) mother-in-law; this type of joke considered (especially depreciatively) as a genre
Read More‘skin and grief’: meaning and origin
British, 1771—as an adjective: emaciated; weak and starving—as a noun: an emaciated or starving person
Read More‘Mother of Parliaments’: meanings and origin
England; also: the British Parliament—UK, 1857—popularised in 1865 by the British politician John Bright
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