“ad fontes!”
also ‘mustang court’ and ‘kangaroo inquest’—USA, 1840—a mock court that disregards or parodies existing principles of law; any tribunal in which judgment is rendered arbitrarily or unfairly
Read MoreUK, 1909—parliamentary procedure: a form of closure by which the chair or speaker selects certain amendments for discussion and excludes others—based on the image of a kangaroo leaping over obstacles
Read MoreUSA, 1792—to say to a person the things that they want to hear—allegedly from the story of a white man and an Indian who went hunting together, and killed a turkey and a buzzard
Read Moreto vomit from drunkenness—U.S. students’ slang, 1980—likens the position of the hands of a person holding onto the sides of a toilet bowl while vomiting therein, to that of a bus driver’s hands holding the steering wheel
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USA, 2003—a group of people organised by means of the internet, mobile phones or other wireless devices, who assemble in public to perform a prearranged action together and then quickly disperse
Read MoreUSA 1813—a heavy metal ball secured by a chain to a person’s leg to prevent escape or as a punishment—figuratively, mid-19th century: anything seen as a heavy restraint, especially the matrimonial bonds
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to put someone in a difficult, vulnerable or compromising situation, especially by exposing them to blame—USA, 1945, sports—the image is of suspending wet washing in the open so that it can dry
Read MoreUK, 1944—the slogan of the Boy Scout Association’s effort to raise money for funds by doing jobs, originally at a shilling a time
Read MoreBritish, colloquial: a period during which an employee who is about to leave a company continues to receive a salary and in return agrees not to work for anyone else—origin, British Army: a paid leave between the end of one posting and the beginning of another
Read Morealso ‘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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word histories 