meaning and origin of the phrase ‘come up and see me sometime’
USA, 1933—a famous invitation to sexual dalliance—alteration of ‘come up sometime and see me’, uttered by Mae West in the 1933 film ‘She Done Him Wrong’
Read More“ad fontes!”
USA, 1933—a famous invitation to sexual dalliance—alteration of ‘come up sometime and see me’, uttered by Mae West in the 1933 film ‘She Done Him Wrong’
Read MoreUK 2006—to play recherché music on a jukebox with the intent of irritating pub customers—attributed to Carl Neville in reference to Robert Wyatt’s ‘Dondestan’
Read MoreUK, 1988—used in similes to denote something that protrudes—originated in British military slang
Read MoreUK, 1950—to be completely lost or wasted; to fail utterly—alludes to ‘pan’ in the sense of the bowl of a toilet
Read Morenot originally coined because of the connotation of explosiveness, but because of the connotations of pleasure, beauty and tininess
Read MoreUSA, 1878—to misunderstand—alludes to an accidental connexion between telephone or telegraph wires of different lines or circuits
Read MoreUSA—blend of ‘screen’ and ‘teenager’—(1957) teenagers reacting to a movie—(1985) teenagers as represented by TV and cinema
Read MoreUK, 1948—USA, 1952—from the image of the over-cautious man who wears both a belt and braces/suspenders to hold up his trousers
Read Moreisolated use in The Fancies, Chast and Noble (1638), by John Ford—1795 as ‘to ride bodkin’—seems to allude to the thinness of the tools that have that name
Read MoreUSA, 1928—originally referred to scenario improvising during the silent-film era—the image is of notes written on a shirt-cuff
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