‘Quatorze Juillet’: meaning and origin
USA, 1882—the fourteenth of July, the national holiday of the French republic, commemorating the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789—also shortened to ‘Quatorze’ (1898)
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‘Bastille Day’: meaning and origin
the fourteenth of July, the national holiday of the French republic, commemorating the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789—coined in 1837 by Thomas Carlyle
Read More‘Kiwiness’: meaning and origin
the quality or fact of being from New Zealand; characteristics regarded as typical of New Zealand or New Zealanders—coined in 1967 by the U.S. Professor of Psychology Eugene Leonard Hartley
Read More‘cowyard confetti’ and variants: meaning and origin
Australia, 1932—also ‘Flemington confetti’ (1933) and ‘farmyard confetti’ (1967)—bullshit (i.e., nonsense, rubbish)—also occasionally used literally in the sense of faeces
Read More‘back of a napkin’: meaning and origin
USA, 1972—indicates that something has been formulated or devised hurriedly, roughly or carelessly, as though sketched or scribbled on the back of a napkin—also with ‘cocktail napkin’
Read More‘back of a cigarette packet’: meaning and origin
UK, 1967—indicates that something has been formulated or devised hurriedly, roughly or carelessly, as though sketched or scribbled on the back of a cigarette packet
Read More‘to rattle one’s dags’: meaning and origin
New Zealand, 1968—to hurry up—‘dags’: clumps of matted wool and dung which hang around a sheep’s rear end—the allusion is to the rattling sound of a sheep’s dags when it runs
Read More‘couldn’t train a choko vine over a country dunny’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1969—is used of an ineffectual person—‘choko’ (i.e., ‘chayote’): the cucumber-like fruit of a cucurbitaceous vine (‘Sechium edule’)
Read More‘girlboss’: meaning and origin
an entrepreneurial, ambitious woman; especially one who runs her own business—USA, 1895
Read More‘like a duck takes to water’: meaning and origin
easily, readily—UK, 1825
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