‘green thumb’: meaning and origin
British, 1907—denotes considerable talent or ability to grow plants—in this phrase, the adjective ‘green’ refers to the colour of growing vegetation—1921: ‘green-thumbed’ (adjective)
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‘green fingers’: meaning and origin
British, 1906—denotes considerable talent or ability to grow plants—in this phrase, the adjective ‘green’ refers to the colour of growing vegetation—1914: ‘green-fingered’ (adjective)
Read More‘to be not so green as one is cabbage-looking’
Australia, 1865—to be less of a fool than one appears to be—this phrase plays on two uses of the adjective ‘green’: 1) denoting the colour of growing vegetation, grass, etc. 2) denoting an inexperienced or naive person
Read More‘trolley-dash’: meanings and origin
UK—1977: an event in which the winner of a game or competition is entitled to a set period of free shopping in a supermarket or other store, the object being to place as many products as possible in a shopping trolley during that time—1994: a quick or rushed shopping trip around a supermarket or other store
Read More‘to trail one’s coat’: meaning and origin
UK, 1837—to go out of one’s way to start a quarrel or a fight—refers to the Irish practice of dragging one’s coat behind one in the expectation that somebody will, intentionally or unintentionally, step on it and provide the pretext needed for a quarrel or a fight
Read More‘home (away) from home’: meaning and origin
a place where one is as happy, relaxed or comfortable as in one’s own home; especially a place providing homelike accommodation or amenities—UK, 1839, in advertisements for hotels
Read More‘home is where the heart is’: meaning and origin
means that the place with which one has the strongest emotional connection is the place that one regards as home—first occurred in October 1828, in an unsigned poem published in The Winter’s Wreath, an annual published in London
Read More‘iron maiden’: meaning and origin
1757, as a loan translation of German ‘Eiserne Jungfer’ (German text published in 1740)—1837, as a loan translation of German ‘Eiserne Jungfrau’—an instrument of torture, supposedly used during the Middle Ages, consisting of an upright coffin-shaped box lined with iron spikes, into which the victim is shut
Read More‘can eat an apple through a picket fence’ and variants
used of a buck-toothed person—USA, 1933, as ‘can eat an apple through a picket fence’—USA, 1950, as ‘can eat an apple through a tennis racquet’—UK, 1979, as ‘can eat an apple through a letter box’
Read More‘like a dose of salts’: meaning and origin
UK, 1806—very rapidly and thoroughly—refers to a dose of aperient salts—has come to be also used in the extended form ‘like a dose of salts through + noun’
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