‘kiss cam’: meaning and early occurrences
a 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
Read More“ad fontes!”
a 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
Read Morethe demand that an extraterrestrial makes to the first human being or animal it encounters after alighting from its flying saucer—USA, 1956—from a cliché in science-fiction stories
Read More1955—originated in stage plays purporting to depict life in northern England, particularly in Lancashire—‘mill’: a factory
Read Moreused of something done cleverly—British and American—originated as the proud exclamation of a child riding a bicycle with no hands on the handlebars
Read MoreUSA—used ironically as a response to a question or statement felt to be blatantly obvious—from 1959 onwards as ‘Does a bear live in the woods?’ and variants
Read More20th century—originally a precautionary stipulation in announcements of events such as church fêtes—hence used humorously of any forthcoming event
Read MoreUK, 1851—is or jokingly denotes a threat made by a member of the public to write to the London newspaper The Times to express outrage about a particular issue
Read Morefar-fetched excuse for failing to hand in school homework—1st recorded UK 1929 but had already long been in usage at that time—dog eating a sermon UK 1894
Read MoreUK, 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 Moresite of a nuclear power station accident (1986)—name associated with the end of the world in the Bible—epithet for Disneyland Paris, seen as a cultural disaster
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