‘we’ve got a right one here’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1958—The phrase ‘we’ve got a right one here’ is used of an odd person or of an idiot. Typically, the speaker uses this phrase when talking to someone about a third party.
Read More“ad fontes!”
UK, 1958—The phrase ‘we’ve got a right one here’ is used of an odd person or of an idiot. Typically, the speaker uses this phrase when talking to someone about a third party.
Read More1910—used of a weakling, or of someone or something that is ineffectual—may have originated in Yorkshire, a county of northern England
Read MoreUSA—1966: an artificial grass surface used for sports fields—‘Astro-’: from the first use of Astroturf in the Astrodome stadium at Houston, Texas—1972, with humorous allusion to ‘grassroots’: an artificial version of a grassroots campaign
Read MoreUSA, 1990—a method of caring for a premature newborn in which a parent holds the infant on their chest in skin-to-skin contact—from the fact that kangaroos give birth to still-developing foetuses, then nurse them in their pouches
Read MoreUSA, 1885—a response to a question that cannot be answered precisely, although a precise answer seems to be expected—various jocular replies have been made up, such as ‘twice the length from the middle to the end
Read MoreUSA, 1992—to reduce staff numbers to levels so low that work can no longer be carried out effectively—portmanteau, coined by the Trends Research Institute, combining the adjective ‘dumb’, meaning ‘stupid’, and the verb ‘downsize’
Read More1980s—to become wildly or explosively angry; to become highly excited or enthusiastic; to intensify rapidly and especially alarmingly—refers to the failure of a guided missile’s guidance system (1966)
Read MoreUSA—1940: a policy of non-acceptance with regard to a specified situation, activity, result, substance, etc.—1971: a policy of non-acceptance with regard to abusive, anti-social or criminal behaviour, especially the use of illegal drugs
Read Morea sample text beginning with ‘lorem ipsum’, based on jumbled elements from Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum—‘lorem ipsum’: arbitrary clipping of the first syllable of ‘dolorem ipsum’ in Cicero’s text
Read Morea live video feed in a sports arena showing images of selected couples in the audience in the expectation that they will kiss—USA and Canada, 2001
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