‘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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‘dad-joke’: meaning and origin
USA, 1987—a joke of the type said to be told by fathers, i.e., a hackneyed, embarrassing or unoriginal joke
Read More‘eligible bachelor’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1830—In ‘eligible bachelor’, the adjective ‘eligible’ means ‘suitable as a partner in marriage’.
Read More‘to reinvent the wheel’: meaning and origin
USA, 1956—to recreate something that already exists, especially at the expense of unnecessary time and effort; to repeat effort needlessly
Read More‘red-light district’: meaning and origin
USA, 1893—the part of a town or city in which prostitution and other commercial sexual activities are concentrated—originally used of Louisville, Kentucky—from the use of a red light as a sign outside a brothel
Read More‘men in buckram’: meaning and origin
1733—denotes imaginary or non-existent people—refers to John Falstaff’s vaunting tale in the First Part of King Henry the Fourth, by William Shakespeare, in which two men in buckram suits gradually become eleven
Read More‘butterfingered’ | ‘butterfingers’
‘butterfingered’, adjective, 1615: having a tendency to let things fall or slip from one’s hands—also (English, regional) unable or unwilling to handle hot items with one’s bare hands—‘butterfingers’, noun, 1835: a butterfingered person, a person with a tendency to let things fall or slip from his or her hands
Read More‘to ride shotgun’: origin and sense developments
USA—literally (1905): to travel as an armed guard next to the driver of a vehicle—in extended use (1948): to accompany, to escort, especially in ‘to ride shotgun on somebody’—figuratively (1949): to assist, to protect, especially in ‘to ride shotgun on somebody’
Read More‘squaw winter’: meaning and origin
USA, 1837—a short period of wintry weather occurring in autumn in the northern United States and in Canada—coined after ‘Indian summer’, from the fact that, because a squaw winter often precedes an Indian summer, they were seen as constituting a couple
Read More‘to spin a yarn’: meaning and origin
UK and USA, 1816—to tell a long, far-fetched story—of nautical origin? (perhaps alludes to making ropes from lengths of yarn on board ship: the men would have told one another stories while performing this long and tedious task)
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