Where’d we get the expression “You bet your sweet bippy!”? It’s from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a zany television show from the late 1960s. The word bippy, by the way, means “butt.” The phrase “You bet your sweet bippy” is a linguistic descendant of...
Who you calling a jabronie? And what exactly is a jabronie? (Or a jaboney, jadroney, jambone, jiboney, gibroni, gibroney, gabroney, jobroni, jobrone, etc.) This playful insult, meaning a “rube” or “loser,” traces to the 1920s, when Italian...
Making money hand over fist evokes the motion of hauling in a rope quickly, one hand passing over the other and closing into a fist. Betsy in Connecticut heard the phrase at dinner, where her daughters guessed it might come from the baseball-bat...
Yadda yadda yadda. Newman! No soup for you! The 1990’s sitcom Seinfeld popularized these expressions and more. Check out this Paul McFedries article from Verbatim. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Seinfeld Expressions” Hello, you...
Costanza wallet n. a bulging, overstuffed billfold or wallet. Etymological Note: After the character George Costanza in the the twelfth episode, The Reverse Peephole, of the ninth season of Seinfeld, which aired on January 15, 1998. In the episode...
put a nickel in someone
v. phr.— «Somebody put a nickel in him today.» —“The Early Show” by Jane Clayson CBS News Aug. 29, 2001. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
