meaning and origin of the phrase ‘to light the (blue) touchpaper’
UK, mid-1950s—to set a course of exciting or dramatic events in motion—refers to firework instructions such as ‘light the blue touchpaper and retire immediately’
Read MoreTag: sports & games
history of the phrase ‘(all) dressed (up) like a Christmas tree’
Britain and USA, early 1900s: over-elaborately dressed—since the mid-19th century, ‘like a Christmas tree’: overelaborateness, heterogeneousness, artificiality
Read Morethe birth of an American phrase: ‘Where’s the beef?’
January 1984—from a television advertisement for the hamburger chain Wendy’s, in which an elderly lady demands where the beef is in a huge hamburger bun
Read Morethe birth of a British catchphrase: ‘mind my bike’
February 1940—coined by the British actor Jack Warner in ‘Garrison Theatre’, a BBC radio comedy series devised to entertain World-War-II audiences
Read Morethe phrase ‘to spend money as if it were going out of fashion’
British and Irish—to spend money as if it were worthless or soon to become so—first (from 1962 onwards) as a misogynistic cliché hammered by the Liverpool Echo
Read Moremeaning and origin of the term ‘(Dr.) Kevorkian’
USA, 1990s—purveyor of doom, especially agent of death, force of suicide—refers to Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011), U.S. physician and advocate of assisted suicide
Read Moremeanings and origin of the British phrase ‘(dark) satanic mills’
UK, 1913—industrial mills—working places characterised by dehumanising forms of labour—from ‘And did those feet in ancient time’, by the English poet William Blake
Read More‘high five’: origin and cultural background
USA, 1980—gesture of celebration or greeting in which two people slap each other’s palms with their arms raised—originated in basketball
Read Moremeanings and origin of ‘Judas sheep’ and ‘Judas goat’
USA, early 20th century—a sheep or a goat used to lead sheep to slaughter—hence any person or thing used as a decoy to lure people into being caught, arrested, etc.
Read Moremeanings and origin of ‘beggar my neighbour’
1734: a card game in which one player tries to win all the cards of the other—1802: refers to an advantage gained by one side at the expense of the other
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