‘as Australian as meat pie’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1966—typically Australian in character—alteration of the phrase ‘as American as apple pie’, with reference to the prominence of meat pie in Australian diet
Read MoreAustralia, 1966—typically Australian in character—alteration of the phrase ‘as American as apple pie’, with reference to the prominence of meat pie in Australian diet
Read MoreUSA, 1976—Australia, 1982—trendy middle- to upper-middle-class people, who are often conservationists, and who, in some cases, have moved from cities and urban areas into country areas
Read MoreAustralia, 1946—to return to one’s profession after retirement; of a singer or other performer: to make frequent comebacks—from the repeated farewell performances given by Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba
Read MoreSeems to have originated in a joke, first recorded in 1955, in which the Tower of London says to the Leaning Tower of Pisa: “I’ve got the time and you’ve got the inclination.”
Read MoreUK 1934 – USA 1935—alludes to a sardonic song by Cole Porter, about the lynching of an upper-class woman after she murders her unfaithful lover
Read More1928—addressed to someone who looks glum—‘scone’ (originally Scots, early 16th century) denotes a light plain doughy cake
Read MoreUSA, 1931—jocular variant (coined on separate occasions by various persons, independently from one another) of ‘here today (and) gone tomorrow’
Read Moreused of a person whose display of distress misleads others into underestimating this distress—UK, 1962—from ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ (1954), by Stevie Smith
Read MoreUK, 1963—ostentatious vulgarity in social life—from the literal sense of a fashionably dressed woman whose appearance covers vulgarity
Read More‘upstairs to bed’—UK, 1923: title of a song by Nixon Grey—‘Bedfordshire’ jocular extension of ‘bed’ (1665)—‘the wooden hill’ metaphor for ‘the stairs’ (1856)
Read More