‘to go (and) jump in(to) the lake’: meaning and origin
to go away and stop being a nuisance—chiefly used in the imperative as a contemptuous dismissal—USA, 1883—the image is of somebody jumping into a lake and drowning
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‘humongous’: meaning and origin
extremely large, huge, enormous—USA, 1967—of uncertain origin; probably a factitious adjective coined on the suffix ‘-ous’, influenced by ‘hugeous’ and ‘monstrous’, and perhaps by the stress-patterns of ‘stupendous’, ‘tremendous’, etc.
Read More‘plonk’ (cheap inferior wine): origin and early occurrences
Australia, 1927—alteration of ‘blanc’ in French ‘vin blanc’ (‘white wine’)—via rhyming slang forms such as ‘plinketty-plonk’, from phrases such as ‘vin blank’ in the slang of soldiers stationed in France during WWI
Read More‘to pull out all the stops’: meaning and origin
to do everything possible to achieve a result or effect—UK, 1865 (as ‘to pull out a few more stops’)—alludes to pulling out all the stops of an organ in order to produce a full and thrilling sound
Read More‘to come to a sticky end’: meaning and early occurrences
to die, or to come to grief, in violent or exceptionally unpleasant circumstances—Australia, 1897—here, the adjective ‘sticky’ means ‘unpleasant’
Read More‘poacher turned gamekeeper’: meaning and origin
a person who now preserves the interests that he or she previously attacked—UK, 19th century—but the notion occurred in Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale and ‘the greatest deer-stealers make the best park-keepers’ in The Church-History of Britain (1655)
Read More‘simples’: meaning and origin
interjection used to suggest that something can be done or understood with no difficulty—UK, 2009—from the catchword uttered by Aleksandr Orlov, an animated Russian meerkat, in a television advertising campaign for comparethemarket.com
Read More‘Rachmanism’: meaning and origin
the exploitation and intimidation of tenants by unscrupulous landlords—UK, 1963—refers to Peter Rachman, a London landlord whose unscrupulous practices became notorious in the early 1960s
Read More‘to paint the Forth Bridge’: meaning and origin
used of any never-ending or arduous task—UK, 1923—alludes to the huge task of maintaining the painted surfaces of the railway bridge over the Firth of Forth, in central Scotland
Read More‘Iron Weathercock’ (as applied to Liz Truss)
UK, 2022— translates French ‘girouette de fer’—a derisive nickname for Liz Truss, in reference both to ‘Iron Lady’ (a nickname for Margaret Thatcher) and to Liz Truss’s changing views on a variety of subjects
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