Tom Dick
adj.— «“That performance was good from us. We felt we did enough to win the game and were in a good position. We were disappointed to lose a goal to a set-piece in the end but it was only three points at stake, that’s all you get. There’s still an awful long way to go.” The winding road takes in Upton Park this afternoon, when Carrick has to hope that by tea-time it will be his old club who are left feeling, in the local parlance, Tom Dick.» —“Carrick happy to be upstaged at latest reunion” by Steve Tongue Independent (United Kingdom) Dec. 17, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Jim in Columbia, South Carolina, has noticed sportscasters’ use of the phrase on the season with reference to a period of time. This construction shows up in the sports pages as early as the 1880s, first referring to a team’s revenue and...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...