“ad fontes!”
USA, 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
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USA, 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
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a 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
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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
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the 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
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used of something done cleverly—British and American—originated as the proud exclamation of a child riding a bicycle with no hands on the handlebars
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word histories 