“ad fontes!”
USA—1941 (slang of the Marines): a state of disorder or confusion—1959 (High-School slang): a prank in which the occupants of a vehicle which has temporarily come to a stop must jump out, run around the vehicle and get back in
Read Moreto promote somebody to an ostensibly higher position where they will be out of the way and less influential—jocular variant of ‘to kick somebody downstairs’, meaning to eject somebody
Read Morea social occasion where the host gets drunk at an earlier time than the guests—1682?—one of several expressions in which the adjective ‘Dutch’ is used derogatorily or derisively
Read MoreUSA, 1920—a system devised by the Red Cross Life Saving Corps for Boy Scout camps, whereby the boys were paired off, each boy in a pair staying with the other throughout a swimming period and taking responsibility for the other’s safety
Read MoreUSA, 1913—to produce, bet or pay out money to support one’s statements or opinions; to do something that demonstrates one’s assertion
Read MoreUSA, 1950, as ‘shopping-bag stuffer’—an advertising leaflet or similar piece of promotional material handed out to shoppers or placed in shopping bags alongside goods purchased
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an assertion of continuing competence, strength, etc., notwithstanding evidence to the contrary—from the title of a painting by the British artist Edwin Landseer, first exhibited in 1838
Read More1969—associated with Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, who borrowed it from George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah (1921)
Read More1910—a humorous phonetic transcription of the phrase “goes into”, as originally used at school in arithmetic lessons (as in “4 guzinter 8 two times”)—hence, by extension: a schoolteacher
Read MoreAustralia, 1890: an analysis of the state of the weather at sea—UK, 1926: the BBC-radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the British Isles
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word histories 