Australia, 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
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Seems 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.”
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UK 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
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USA, 1931—jocular variant (coined on separate occasions by various persons, independently from one another) of ‘here today (and) gone tomorrow’
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used 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
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‘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)
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USA, 1984—used to indicate that something is blatantly obvious—humorously from ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ and ‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’
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USA, 1951—rhetorical question used ironically as a response to a question or statement felt to be blatantly obvious
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