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Left holding the bag - It actually dates back to the middle of the eighteenth century in Britain. The original version was to give somebody the bag to hold. You can imagine a criminal gang, about to be confronted by the authorities, telling the most stupid — or expendable — member of their company to hold on to the swag while they took ...
In recent decades, bag of hammers is almost exclusively American (where it's normally used to mean dumb, stupid), and bag of spanners is British (invariably used to mean ugly). Note that the crazy , mad sense for hammers is relatively uncommon - that's less than 30 results in total for both collocations, whereas dumb as a bag of hammers has a ...
old bag noun. an unattractive or unloveable old woman, UK 1949. Disparaging; possibly a variant of OLD BAT, cognisant of OLD BAG (elderly prostitute) which itself may derive from OLD BAT. Ray Puxley, writing in 1992, suggests this may be rhyming slang, formed on 'hag'. an elderly, slatternly prostitute; hence pejorative for a younger prostitute.
Part of the partner game is counting how many hands you will win, and bidding correctly, without seeing your partner's hand. You only get points for hands you bid. Every hand you win above the amount you bid is called a "bag". If you get enough "bags", you loose a lot of points, like 10 for 100, IIRC. So, the player who under-bid would say "my ...
9. This is a fairly standard phrase (although it would usually be hyphenated: "double-bag it, please.") However, almost every phrase you can imagine has, at one time or another, been given a sexual/jokey connotation, and so the "wearing two condoms at once" meaning is also common. As long as you use the phrase in the context of a grocery store ...
Earlier senses of "bulky bag" (c.1300) and "big, blustering fellow" (1580s) may represent separate borrowings from the Scandinavian source. Stuff We All Get is a later "backronym". The first schwag as promo stuff I heard was stickers and so on given out by Flickr mid last decade, as their fun variation of swag .
"Soft version or alternative for 'A rotten potato spoils the whole bag.'" After I posted an idiomatic English alternative, a moderator edited the question and left a comment saying, "I don't understand how changing potatoes to apples makes this politer." Obviously, it does not.
Originally from the 1610s, a small book meant to be carried in one’s pocket, from pocket + book. Meaning “a booklike leather folder for papers, bills, etc.” is from 1722. A pocket-book does not refer to a woman's purse only. Dickens in his book Great Expectations referred to men using pocketbooks as well.
4. There is an idiomatic expression in Turkish for describing very heavy things: "Heavy like a dead donkey" (Eşek ölüsü gibi ağır). In English, there is a dead weight but it is not quite similar. Also, it has two meanings, the first of which is related to heavy weight but used for people in certain contexts. I'm not sure if it used for ...
@LiveMynd "doggie/doggy bag" is a euphemism, people ask for a doggie bag for several reasons: they actually do have pets; they spent a lot of money and they don't want to see it wasted; the food was too much, but they're happy to eat leftovers the next day etc..Restaurant folk know this, in fact, it's so well-known, people have stopped pretending the food is for their pets, and just come right ...