‘Hollywood ending’: meanings and origin
USA, 1927—a conventional film ending, regarded as sentimental or simplistic, and often featuring an improbably positive outcome—by extension: an improbably positive outcome to a real-life situation
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‘dumbsize’: meaning and origin
USA, 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 More‘the thick plottens’: meaning and origin
USA, 1883—deliberate transposition of the initial consonants of ‘plot’ and ‘thickens’ in ‘the plot thickens’—‘the plot thickens’, attested in 1672, means: the storyline becomes more complex or convoluted
Read More‘the nineteenth hole’: meaning and early occurrences
UK, 1890—USA, 1899—the humorous phrase ‘the nineteenth hole’ denotes the bar room in a golf clubhouse, as reached at the end of a standard round of eighteen holes
Read More‘the birds and the bees’: meaning and early occurrences
USA, 1936—the facts about sexual reproduction, especially as explained to a child—when this phrase appeared, ‘birds’ and ‘bees’ had long been commonly paired in literary allusions
Read More‘to go ballistic’: meanings and origin
1980s—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 More‘bang for the buck’: meaning and origin
USA, 1953—value for money, return on an investment—originally used of military spending on nuclear weapons—‘bang’ denotes a nuclear explosion, ‘buck’ denotes a dollar
Read More‘asphalt jungle’ | ‘concrete jungle’
USA—‘asphalt jungle’ 1920—‘concrete jungle’ 1924—designate a city or urban area which has a high density of large, unattractive, modern buildings and is perceived as an unpleasant living environment
Read More‘chicken-and-egg’: meaning and origin
USA, 1855—used of a situation in which it is difficult to distinguish cause and effect—refers to the traditional problem of which came first, the chicken (to lay the egg) or the egg (to produce the chicken)
Read More‘to take the checkered flag’: meaning and origin
USA, 1923—in motorsports: to win a race—refers to ‘checkered flag’, denoting a flag with a black-and-white checkered pattern, displayed to drivers at the end of a race
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