“ad fontes!”
UK, 1968—British and Australian: expresses indifference towards, or rejection of, a suggestion—from ‘Umpa, Umpa, Stick It Up Your Jumper’, a song recorded in 1935 by The Two Leslies (Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes)
Read More
UK and Ireland—the small change that has slipped down between the cushions and the back, or the arms, of a sofa—also used figuratively: public funds that are ‘miraculously’ found; permanent end; wasted money
Read More
conveys derisive self-congratulation for an action that the speaker has done from a sense of duty rather than for pleasure—from a line uttered by Charles Laughton in the 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII
Read Moreused to rebuke an unrealistic conditional—USA, 1808: ‘if my aunt had been my uncle, what would have been her gender?’—France, 1843: ‘si ma tante était un homme, ça serait mon oncle’ (‘if my aunt were a man, that would be my uncle’)
Read Morethe three traditional interests of the stereotypical New-Zealand man—but also applied to both sexes—1962 or 1963 as the title and in the lyrics of a song by the New-Zealand singer-songwriter Rod Derrett
Read More
used to characterise melodrama—from the words said over her dead child by Lady Isabel in East Lynne (1874), T. A. Palmer’s stage play adapted from the 1861 novel by the English author Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen Price)
Read MoreUSA, 1876: from beginning to end, completely, exhaustively—literal meaning, 1852: all the successive parts of a meal, from soup at the beginning to nuts at the end
Read MoreUSA, 1883—exclamation of surprise at seeing something or somebody unexpected—alludes to a hunter who will lament seeing all sorts of game when he goes out into the woods and fields without his gun
Read MoreUSA, 1925—With, of course, a pun on ‘pee’, meaning ‘to urinate’, the jocular phrase ‘silent like (the) ‘p’ in swimming’ is used when exposing a difficulty in pronunciation.
Read MoreUK—originated in British-Army slang, first to designate an unintelligent person (1943), then any ordinary soldier of the lowest ranks (1945)—finally also, in civilian usage: any ordinary person (1947)
Read More
word histories 