‘to have a canary’: meaning and origin
chiefly Irish—to lose one’s composure, to be extremely upset—UK, 1970—probably a humorous play on ‘to have a coronary’ (i.e., to have a heart attack)
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‘to avoid clichés like the plague’: meaning and origin
UK, 1935—a humorous self-contradictory phrase which includes the clichéd phrase ‘to avoid like the plague’ in order to express the necessity of avoiding clichés—as a piece of advice for writers, has itself become a cliché
Read More‘rifferama’: meaning and origin
music characterised by excessive or extravagant riffing—USA, 1975—from ‘riff’ (a short repeated musical phrase) and ‘-orama’ (used to form nouns designating a display, event, etc., of considerable size or expanse)
Read More‘shipping forecast’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1890: an analysis of the state of the weather at sea—UK, 1926: the BBC-radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the British Isles
Read More‘Mrs Mop’: meaning and origin
a charwoman, a cleaning lady—UK, 1940—popularised in 1942 by the charwoman’s name in the BBC radio comedy series ‘It’s That Man Again’
Read More‘Mrs Dale-ish’: meaning and origin
conventionally middle-class—UK, 1953—from ‘Mrs Dale’, the name of a conventional middle-class woman in Mrs Dale’s Diary, a BBC radio serial broadcast from 1948 to 1969
Read More‘one’s cheese slipped off one’s cracker’: meaning and origin
one is no longer rational or sane—USA, 1983
Read More‘ginormous’: meaning and origin
impressively or shockingly big—a blend of ‘gigantic’ and ‘enormous’—apparently coined by Welsh novelist Berta Ruck in Wedding March (1938)
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‘to disappear up one’s own arse’: meaning and early occurrences
British slang, 1960s—‘to disappear up one’s own arse’: to become self-involved, pretentious or conceited—‘to be up one’s own arse’: to be self-involved, pretentious or conceited
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