‘brothel-creepers’: meaning and origin
1943—‘brothel-creepers’ (also ‘brothel-creeper shoes’ and ‘creepers’): denotes soft-soled shoes—refers to the stealthiness that those shoes permit
Read MoreTag: South Africa
‘tickety-boo’: meaning, early occurrences and origin
UK, 1938—old-fashioned informal British-English adjective meaning ‘in good order’, ‘fine’—origin obscure: perhaps from Hindi ‘ṭhīk hai’ (‘all right’) or from ‘the ticket’ (‘the correct thing’); or it may simply be a purely fanciful formation
Read Morenotes on ‘see you later, agitator’
USA, 1956—jocular variant of equally jocular ‘see you later, alligator’ (1952)—recoined on separate occasions by various persons, independently from one another
Read Moremeanings of ‘to give the cat another goldfish’
USA, 1919—‘spare no expense’—also ‘go all out for it’, ‘hand victory on a platter’, ‘allow yourself more of what you want’ (South Africa)
Read More
word histories 