Quean-CrazedĪt one time an old word for a sex worker, quean came to be used as a nickname for any pretty young woman in the Middle Ages. Undecided or unsure prevaricating over a tough decision. Heading off in all directions, like an exploding firework. QuandorumĪ compliment, or a polite, well-mannered gesture or phrase. Derives from an old English dialect word, quamp, meaning “to dampen someone’s spirits.” 11. QuallmireĪn obsolete word from the 16th century for a quagmire. “The season for drinking,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. No one is quite sure where this meaning comes from, given that a quadruplator is literally someone who increases something fourfold, but it’s been suggested that there might once have been a four-part punishment for those involved. QuadruplatorĪn old term from Roman law for an informer, or for someone paid to attack someone else in court. (A quadrivium was also a course offered at medieval universities, in which students learned the four “mathematical arts”: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.) 6. A place where three roads meet, incidentally, is a trivium. QuadriviumĪn old word for a crossroads, literally a place where four roads meet. QuaderĪn old Scots word literally meaning “to make something square,” but which can also be used figuratively to mean “to agree with or get along with someone.” 4. QuackhoodĪ 19th-century word for charlatanism, or falsehood-literally, the state of being a “quack.” 3. QuaaltaghĪn old Manx word for the first person you see after you leave your front door. Not all of them, unfortunately, are what you could call useful or everyday terms-it’s hard to drop words like querquedule (an old name for the garganey duck) or quarkonium (a meson particle comprising a quark and its corresponding antiquark, apparently) into normal conversation-but you might have better luck with the 40 quirky Q-words listed here. It might be the rarest letter at our disposal, but listed under Q in the dictionary is a clutch of fantastically bizarre words. In fact, according to Oxford Dictionaries, you can expect Q to account for less than a fifth of 1 percent of a piece of written English-or, put another way, only one letter in every 510 will be a Q. With * go bananas* from 1964 and drive bananas from 1975.Q is the least used letter of the English alphabet. The origins of banana oil are also unknown, but The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (1997) says it's possibly variation on snake oil (quack medicine) extended to mean nonsense.Įdit 2: Green's Dictionary of Slang Online has the noun back to 1957: However, The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2007) says bananas (madly excited mad behaving oddly) is from 1957 and derives from banana oil (nonsense persuasive talk) from 1924.Ĭontemporary synonyms are horsefeathers and appleseauce. Lighter, this expression may allude to the similar go ape, in that apes and other primates are closely associated with eating bananas. Turning to slang dictionaries, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (1997) says of go bananas:Īccording to the lexicographer J. This Ngram suggests this meaning really took off in the early seventies: Compared to it, Bonanza is bananas, and Dr Bon Casey is just another pill-roll. ![]() I refer to the taunt, suspenseful, real-life drama NBC brought us from Oakmount Country Club over the weekend - the National Open. We heard the police broadcast!! They say you're bananas!!īut it's hard to gauge the exact meaning without seeing the picture.Įdit: I found a possible example of crazy bananas earlier than 1968 in The Spokesman-Review (Jun 22, 1962): The OED's second quotation is from a 1956 Ohio newspaper caption: This year matches with the OED's third quotation from the University of South Dakota's Current Slang:īananas, adj., excited and upset ‘wild’.-College students, both sexes, Kentucky.-I'd say it, but everyone would just go bananas. The 1935 bananas is in brackets in the OED, so they're not convinced it is the same meaning.Įtymonline says the crazy meaning is much later: 1968. It soon after appears in 1942's The American thesaurus of slang: a complete reference book of colloquial speech in the definition for eccentric: "Balmy, bats, bent, ".Īnother 1833 US slang meaning of bent is to intoxicated with alcohol or drugs. The eccentric, perverted or homosexual meaning of bent may be originally UK slang it appears in 1930 in Brophy and Partridge's Songs and slang of the British soldier: 1914-1918 meaning spoiled or ruined. This may be alluding to bent, the shape of a banana.īent is 1914 US criminal slang meaning dishonest or crooked, and 1930 US slang meaning illegal or stolen. He's bananas, he's sexually perverted a degenerate. The 1935 definition in Albin Jay Pollock's The Underworld Speaks (apparently published by the FBI to help people spot gangsters by their speech) is:
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