“ad fontes!”
USA, 1930—‘to crawl, or to come, out of the woodwork’: of an unpleasant or unwelcome person or thing, to come out of hiding, to emerge from obscurity; the image is of vermin or insects crawling out of crevices or other hidden places in a building
Read MoreUK, 1962—the time after which programmes unsuitable for children are broadcast on television—from the image of a dividing line between two different sorts of programmes
Read More
UK, 1953, humorous and euphemistic—‘to fall off (the back of) a lorry’: of goods, ‘to be acquired in dubious or unspecified circumstances’, especially ‘to be stolen’—variant with ‘truck’ came into use later in Australian and North American English
Read More
UK, 1844—‘bobby’: a policeman—from ‘Bobby’, pet form of ‘Robert’, in allusion to Robert Peel, who, as Home Secretary, established the Metropolitan Police in 1829—cf. ‘peeler’ (1816), originally a member of the Peace Preservation Force in Ireland established in 1814 by Robert Peel
Read MoreOf American-English origin, ‘bag lady’, or ‘shopping-bag lady’, denotes a homeless woman, often elderly, who carries her possessions in shopping bags. The earliest instance that I have found is from The Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) of 19th June 1971.
Read MoreUK, early 19th century—an imaginary street where people in difficulties, now especially financial ones, are supposed to reside—urban counterpart of ‘Dicky’s meadow’
Read MoreUK, 1919—possibly a mere euphemism for having too much to drink, regardless of the actual number of drinks that have been consumed (‘eight’ probably arbitrary)
Read MoreUK, 1891—‘to take the mickey (or ‘the mike’) out of’: ‘to tease or ridicule’—probably after ‘Mickey (or ‘Mike’) Bliss’, rhyming slang for ‘piss’
Read More
UK, 1971, in graffiti—preceded by a proper or common noun in the singular or plural; used to assert the pre-eminence of a specified person or thing
Read More
UK, 1784—elaborated on the archaic ‘on the spur’, which meant ‘in great haste’ and referred to the use of spurs to urge a horse forward
Read More
