chicken-in-the-basket circuit
n.— «the set and costumes are reminiscent of the troughs of Glitter’s career when he played the chicken-in-the-basket circuit—although I’m sure he never appeared at La Rue’s Codpiece, Didcot, as the script suggests.» —“A Tribute To Gary Glitter” Financial Times (U.K.) May 18, 1994. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Michelle in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders about the origin of alley-oop!, which she says when hoisting her toddler. It’s from French allez, the imperative of aller meaning “to go” and houp or hop, an onomatopoeic utterance made...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...