“ad fontes!”
Australia, 1939—someone whose presence spoils things for others; an odd person out—of unknown origin—perhaps a variant of ‘gooseberry’, as in ‘to play gooseberry’—perhaps an alteration of ‘gripe’—perhaps related in some respect to ‘sour grapes’
Read MoreThe obsolete Australian-English phrase to jump one’s horse over the bar, and its variants, meant to sell a horse for liquor. The following definition is from an unpublished manuscript entitled Materials for a dictionary of Australian Slang, collected from 1900 to 1910, by Alfred George Stephens and S. J. O’Brien—as quoted by Gerald Alfred Wilkes (1927-2020) in A […]
Read MoreAustralia, 1837—the deliberately slow pace of work characteristic of public-sector workers—originally used of convict labourers—in Australia as a penal colony, unease about the word ‘convict’ led to the creation of euphemistic terms such as ‘government man’ and ‘public servant’
Read MoreAustralia—1954: a very unpleasant experience—originally, 1953: a particularly rough stretch of road on the 6,500-mile round-Australia Redex Reliability Trial of August-September 1953—hence, 1953: any particularly rough stretch of road
Read Moreto live in conditions of extreme want—Australia, 1832; Ireland and Britain, 1834; USA, 1846—in early use, the phrase frequently occurs in relation to Ireland and to the armed forces
Read MoreAustralia, 1912—of a racehorse: to perform very badly—also in extended use and in the opposite sense—from ‘hairy goat’ (1894): a racehorse which performs badly—synonym ‘hairy dog’ (1908)
Read MoreAustralia, 1970—a Melbourne City Council parking officer—the adjective ‘grey’ refers to the colour of those officers’ uniform; the noun ‘meanie’ refers to the nastiness displayed by those officers in the accomplishment of their duties
Read MoreUSA—‘blue-sky talk’ 1900—‘blue-sky research’ 1947—the adjective ‘blue-sky’ is used to mean: (in negative sense) fanciful, hypothetical; (in positive sense) creative or visionary—from the notion of a blue sky as a place free from disturbances or difficulties
Read MoreAustralia, 1902—of no use or advantage whatsoever, no good at all—origin unknown—alliterative effect and phonetical factors proper to Australia may have contributed to the currency of the phrase
Read Morethe phrases built on the pattern ‘to out-X X’, in which ‘X’ is a person’s name, mean to be superior to X in his or her characteristics—the prefix ‘out-’ has been used to form verbs conveying the sense of surpassing, exceeding or beating in the action described by the simple verb
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