‘spy in the cab’: meaning and origin
a tachograph—coined in Manchester (England), in September 1968, by lorry drivers who opposed the proposed introduction of the tachograph into lorries
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‘to live in each other’s pockets’: meaning and early occurrences
to live in excessively close proximity or interdependence—1762: “the company squeezed themselves into one another’s pockets” in a letter by Horace Walpole
Read More‘cackle-cutting’: meaning and origin
UK, 1904—refers to the action of making someone stop chattering—from the colloquial imperative phrase ‘cut the cackle (and come to the horses)’, meaning: stop talking (and get to the heart of the matter)
Read More‘on the wrong/right side of history’: meanings and early occurrences
USA, 1888—at variance/in line with the (likely) thought, practice or judgement of the future; at odds/coincident with how commentators view (or are likely to view) an issue or action retrospectively
Read More‘perp walk’: meaning and origin
U.S. slang, 1986—a march into or out of a police car, courthouse, etc., that a person in police custody is made to perform for the benefit of the news media—‘perp’: shortening of ‘perpetrator’
Read More‘mauvaise langue’: meanings and origin
UK, 1822—a vituperative gossip, a scandalmonger; an evil or malicious tongue—a borrowing from French ‘mauvaise langue’ (literally ‘bad tongue’) of same significations
Read More‘jobation’: meaning and origin
1687—a lengthy and tedious reprimand—from the verb ‘job’ (1666), meaning: to reprimand in a long and tedious harangue—with allusion to the lengthy reproofs addressed to Job by his friends in the Book of Job
Read More‘to walk the plank’: meanings and origin
late 18th century, in the context of piracy: to walk along a plank placed over the side of a ship until one falls into the sea—hence, figuratively, early 19th century: to be forced to resign from one’s office or position
Read MoreHow the French Revolution influenced the English phrase ‘feet of clay’
the earliest occurrences of ‘feet of clay’, used without explicit reference to the Bible, date from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and translate French ‘pieds d’argile’
Read More‘heifer-dust’: meaning, origin and early occurrences
nonsense, rubbish—USA, first decade of the 20th century—probably a euphemism for the noun ‘bullshit’, with the noun ‘dust’ used in the sense of ‘rubbish’, ‘garbage’
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