‘the whole box and dice’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1828—Ireland, 1832—a group of things or people in its entirety—‘box’ refers to a box from which dice are thrown in gaming or gambling
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‘to be a box of birds’: meaning and origin
Australia and New Zealand, 1939—to be in good spirits, ‘chirpy’—the image is of a boxful of chirping birds (cf. the extended form ‘happy as a bird in a box of birdseed’)—New-Zealand variant ‘to be a box of fluffy ducks’, also ‘to be a box of fluffies’
Read More‘off one’s trolley’: meanings and origin
USA, 1888—deranged, irrational (also, in early use, drunk)—based on the image of a trolley-wheel coming off its trolley-wire—‘trolley’, also ‘trolley-wheel’: a pulley at the end of a pole, for transmitting electric current from an overhead wire to the motor of a trolley-car
Read More‘to trail one’s coat’: meaning and origin
UK, 1837—to go out of one’s way to start a quarrel or a fight—refers to the Irish practice of dragging one’s coat behind one in the expectation that somebody will, intentionally or unintentionally, step on it and provide the pretext needed for a quarrel or a fight
Read More‘home (away) from home’: meaning and origin
a place where one is as happy, relaxed or comfortable as in one’s own home; especially a place providing homelike accommodation or amenities—UK, 1839, in advertisements for hotels
Read More‘home is where the heart is’: meaning and origin
means that the place with which one has the strongest emotional connection is the place that one regards as home—first occurred in October 1828, in an unsigned poem published in The Winter’s Wreath, an annual published in London
Read More‘budgie smugglers’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1998—a pair of short, tight-fitting men’s swimming trunks—refers to the appearance of the male genitals in figure-hugging trunks—‘budgie’: colloquial abbreviation of ‘budgerigar’, denoting a small Australian parrot
Read More‘like a dose of salts’: meaning and origin
UK, 1806—very rapidly and thoroughly—refers to a dose of aperient salts—has come to be also used in the extended form ‘like a dose of salts through + noun’
Read More‘to reinvent the wheel’: meaning and origin
USA, 1956—to recreate something that already exists, especially at the expense of unnecessary time and effort; to repeat effort needlessly
Read More‘like a red rag to a bull’: meaning and origin
‘red rag’—a piece of red cloth used to provoke an animal—hence, figuratively, a source of provocation or annoyance, something which excites violent indignation—the notion occurs in the late 16th century
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