‘chalk and talk’: meaning and origin
USA, 1871—a traditional method of teaching consisting of lectures (talk) illustrated chiefly on the blackboard (chalk)
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Is ‘(as) right as a trivet’ an alteration of ‘(as) tight as a rivet’?
It has been said that ‘(as) right as a trivet’ an alteration of ‘(as) tight as a rivet’. But the latter phrase, which postdates the former, originally meant ‘extremely tight’, not ‘thoroughly or perfectly right’.
Read More‘Gloria Soame’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1965—the Strine equivalent of ‘glorious home’—‘Strine’: the English language as spoken by Australians
Read More‘vee-dub’: meaning and origin
a Volkswagen car—USA, 1967—from the pronunciation of ‘VW’ (initialism from the name ‘Volkswagen’)—‘dub’: shortened form of the adjective ‘double’ in ‘double U’
Read More‘on one’s Jack Jones’: meaning and origin
‘on one’s own’—UK, 1926—‘Jack Jones’ is rhyming slang for ‘alone’, or for ‘own’ in ‘on one’s own’
Read More‘no wucking furries’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1986—used as an assurance that all is fine, or to express one’s agreement or acquiescence—euphemistic alteration, with switching of the initial consonants, of ‘no fucking worries’
Read More‘sneaky-beaky’: meaning and origin
an intelligence operative, also an intelligence operation—UK, 1966—from ‘sneaky’ (furtive, deceitful) and ‘beaky’ (referring to an overly inquisitive person, with allusion to a prominent nose)
Read More‘(as) thick as a brick’: meaning and origin
very stupid—popularised by Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick as a Brick’ (1972), but already existed—in early use (19th century) applied to nouns such as ‘skull’ and ‘head’, used metonymically for ‘intelligence’
Read MoreWhy the French language is intrinsically sexist.
In French, the concept of dependency underlies the semantic distribution of some basic lexical items: the female is strictly defined in her relation of dependency to the male, as a daughter or as a spouse.
Read More‘to drop one’s aitches’: meaning and early occurrences
also ‘to drop one’s h’s’—not to pronounce the letter h at the beginning of words in which it is pronounced in standard English—1855—1847 as ‘not to sound one’s h’s’
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