‘savoury duck’: meaning and origin

9th Jul 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

Lancashire, England, 1833—a faggot, a meatball, “a compound of onions, flour, and small pieces of pork” (The Liverpool Echo, 20 August 1880)—probably one of the common dishes humorously named after daintier items of food

‘jam butty’ (police patrol car)

2nd Jul 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

UK, 1971—‘jam butty’ (also ‘jam sandwich’): a colloquial appellation for a police patrol car having a red stripe painted on a white background

‘until Nelson gets his eye back’: meaning and origin

20th Jun 2021.Reading time 12 minutes.

UK and Ireland—with reference to the fact that Horatio Nelson was blinded in one eye—(1922) ‘until/when Nelson gets his eye back’ is used of a very long time in the future—(1933) the metaphor of Nelson getting his eye back is used of a very small chance of success

‘queue-jump’, ‘to jump the queue’: meanings and early occurrences

5th Jun 2021.Reading time 24 minutes.

UK, 1920 (‘queue-jumper’)—literally: to push forward out of turn in a queue—figuratively: to obtain unfair priority over others—especially used since the 1930s in relation to compulsory queueing schemes implemented by public-transport authorities

‘gavroche’: meaning and origin

9th May 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

USA, 1863—a street urchin, especially in Paris, France—from ‘Gavroche’, the name of a street urchin in Les Misérables (1862), a novel by Victor Hugo

notes on phrases such as ‘nom de crinoline’ and ‘nom de freak’

29th Apr 2021.Reading time 19 minutes.

On the pattern of phrases such as ‘nom de guerre’, ‘nom de théâtre’ and ‘nom de plume’, ‘nom de —’ is used, often humorously, to form phrases denoting a pseudonym, an alternative name.

meaning and origin of the British noun ‘fly-tipping’

27th Apr 2021.Reading time 8 minutes.

1947—the unauthorised dumping of waste, especially while in the process of transporting it—‘fly’ refers to ‘on the fly’, meaning ‘while in motion or progress’—‘tipping’ is the gerund of the verb ‘tip’, in the sense ‘to dump’

‘T.W.O.C’: meaning and sociological background

21st Apr 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

UK, 1972—the offence of taking a car without the owner’s consent, especially for the purpose of joyriding, which was a social phenomenon prevalent in north-eastern England—acronym for ‘taking without owner’s consent’

‘a whale of a (good) time’: meaning and early occurrences

6th Mar 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

USA, 1871—The phrase ‘a whale of a (good) time’ denotes a hugely enjoyable time, and alludes to the enormousness of whales.

‘to chase the dragon’: meaning and origin

31st Jan 2021.Reading time 17 minutes.

to take heroin by heating it and inhaling the fumes, which form a pattern resembling the tail of a dragon—originated in Hong Kong in the 1950s as a translation of Cantonese slang ‘chui lung’, ‘dragon chasing’