“ad fontes!”
UK, 1877—an onion-seller from Brittany who sold onions door-to-door around the coasts of Britain—used with modifying word, ‘Johnny’ designates a person of the type, profession, etc., specified
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used to characterise melodrama—from the words said over her dead child by Lady Isabel in East Lynne (1874), T. A. Palmer’s stage play adapted from the 1861 novel by the English author Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen Price)
Read MoreAccording to superstition, if on waking on the first morning of a month one mutters to oneself ‘(white) rabbit(s)’ three times before speaking to anyone, then one will have good luck during the whole month.
Read MoreUK, 18th century—addressed to one who stands between the speaker and the light of a window, a lamp, a candle or a fire, or, more generally, to one who obstructs the speaker’s view
Read MoreUK—originated in British-Army slang, first to designate an unintelligent person (1943), then any ordinary soldier of the lowest ranks (1945)—finally also, in civilian usage: any ordinary person (1947)
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UK, 1823 as ‘calf’s head is best hot’, defined by John Badcock as “the apology for one of those who made no bones of dining with his topper on” in Slang. A Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon-ton, and the Varieties of Life
Read More1951—with pun on the noun ‘camp’ (i.e.: encampment): extremely camp (i.e.: ostentatiously and extravagantly effeminate; deliberately exaggerated and theatrical in style)
Read Morea word in confidence—UK, 1927—‘shell-like’ elliptical for ‘shell-like ear’, which was originally a poetical term associating the shape of the external ear with the graceful convolutions of a small pink seashell
Read Moredirty fingernails—1906—British and Irish English—but the comparison between the dirt edging the fingernails and the black border edging mourning paper dates back to the 19th century
Read MoreUK, 1898—Australia, 1913—used when, while addressing someone, the speaker is interrupted by someone else—in particular when the person who interrupts is a subordinate of the person whom the speaker addresses
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