Hole-in-the-wall Hole-in-the-wall is one of those phrases where you get a lot of words hyphenated, if you wrote it down: hole-in-the-wall, being used as a single word, as a noun. "'I'm going to the hole-in-the-wall"' you might say or "'I'm getting some money out of the hole-in-the-wall"'. Well you can see what it means, it means an automatic cash dispenser - one of those installed in the outside wall of a bank or some other money-giving organisation.  It's British colloquial; it's not used as far as I know in the States, or in Australia, or anywhere, although I wouldn't be surprised if it spread a little bit - always written with hyphens. Very unusual to see phrases of this kind and sentences being used in this way, as single words. But if you listen out for them, you'll find them - especially being used as adjectives. Have you heard people for instance say "'he's a very get-up-and-go-person"'? Now there's the sentence 'get up and go'. To say a "'get-up-and-go-person"' means somebody who's got lots of oomph inside them, lots of enthusiasm. Or if I give you a "'come-hither-look"' - a "'come-hither-look"': come here - come hither. Another phrase being used as an adjective.  You can try them out as a sort of game. "'Who do you think you are?"' is a common enough expression - so you can make it an adjective and say "'he gave me a who-do-you-think-you-are sort of look"'. Make it even longer if you want: "'he gave me a who-do-you-think-you-are-and-why-are-you-looking-at-me sort of look"' - but there is a limit to the length you can make an adjective. Don't go on for too long, you'll run out of breath!  Extra information  Katherine, Chicago, IL, USA writes:  In his explanation of "hole-in-the-wall", Professor Crystal says that it means an ATM, and the term is not used in the United States. It's true that we don't use hole-in-the-wall to describe an ATM. But we do use it to describe a small, modest, and out-of-the-way place, like a diner or a rundown cafe.  For example: "My apartment is just a hole-in-the-wall, but my rent is so low I can't complain."  "Instead of going to a fancy restaurant, let's visit some family-owned hole-in-the-wall."  The Hole-in-the-Wall is a nightclub in Austin, Texas; a community theater in New Britain, Connecticut and a place in Wyoming that once served as a hideout for the legendary gunmen Jesse James and Butch Cassidy.  Graham from Australia adds:  The term "hole-in-the-wall" for an ATM is in common use in Australia. It appeared to derive, or at least to gain common recognition, from an early television advertisment, in which the boss's secretary pops out to the bank after closing time for cash. When she returns with the cash he asks how she got it and she replies that "I just punched a hole in the wall of the statewide building society". The term soon became pretty universal here. 

Wannabe

A very unusual feature of SOME languages, and of English in particular, is that you can have phrases that can be used as words: a phrase used as a word! 'Wannabe' is a good case in point. It's of course a colloquial version of "want to be" - wannabe: w - a - double n - a - b - e - sometimes with two e's at the end. If I say "he's a wannabe", what I mean is he's an admirer or a fan; somebody who wants to emulate a celebrity by copying that celebrity's dress or behaviour or something like this.  It actually started back in the United States sometime in the 1980s. I think it first became very popular when people wanted to be like Madonna the pop star. Certainly that's when I first heard it very very regularly and a 'wannabe' person is someone who wants to be as famous, or just get some reflected glory from the person, in this case Madonna, that they were admiring. It reflects the colloquial pronunciation.  Notice, it's not a very polite expression. You can talk about other people as being wannabes, but you wouldn't say that you yourself were a wannabe, and if you say about somebody "he's a wannabe", you're really being a little bit sceptical about that person's state of mind I think, to some extent. But it's a very popular term - you'll hear everybody use it these days.  Extra information  Elisabeth from USA writes:  The term "wannabe" started in America after the movie "The Godfather". Before the movie most Italian Americans were very quiet about the Mafia, after the movie, some people were so proud that they wanted to say they were part of it too. So to answer the question is he in the Mafia - no just a wannabe (I think it started in New York). Also,another term: everyone became "connected" meaning they knew of or said they know someone in the Mafia as in "he is connected". 

Bog standard It's pretty rare in English to find a compound word with a slang first part and a formal second part. Bog standard is one of those that's come in in the last few years. It means...what does it mean? It means to be basic, to be ordinary, to be unexceptional, to be uninspired - it just means ordinary. If you say something is 'bog standard', you mean it is perfectly ordinary. "He's got a bog standard car" means a perfectly ordinary car. "I've got a bog standard library book" means I've got a perfectly ordinary library book that's not exceptional or interesting in any way.  It's a British slang thing; its origin is quite obscure; nobody quite knows where it came from. Some people think that it's actually from early motorbike sales, because motorbikes used to come in a very large box you know when they were delivered ? you didn't sort of drive them away, they were delivered. They came in what's called 'box standard' - and then that became 'bog standard'; in other words, out of the box, it's a perfectly ordinary kind of delivery, or ordinary kind of a bike that you bought.  But people don't like that and they think that it's got a much more interesting etymology than that: a bog of course is a slang word for toilet in British English, and some people think that 'bog standard' has that kind of origin. Don't see it myself, somehow. I rather like the idea that bog means something rural, you know - the rural people are often in the bog, 'cause the bog's a muddy sort of area, full of peat and things like that. And so bog is often used to mean 'unsophisticated'. So I don't know: there's three possible etymologies for it; nobody quite knows where it comes from. It may have an ordinary meaning, but it certainly isn't an ordinary word. 

Gobsmacked English loves compound words: 'washing machine' and all that sort of thing. But when you get a compound word, the two parts of the compound are usually stylistically very homogeneous, in other words, they are the same style: formal first part - formal second part, and so on. You don't usually get a compound word where the first part is a slang thing and the second part is a rather ordinary or formal thing - they don't usually mix - but gobsmacked is a perfect exception to that rule.  To be gobsmacked - it means to be astounded, flabbergasted, speechless with amazement. And what you've got is the perfectly ordinary word 'smacked' (to smack) and a Northern word 'gob'. Gob is the Northern word for mouth. I used to live in Liverpool for many years and you'd say to people "ah, shut yer gob", you know, and it simply means, mouth. So, to be 'gobsmacked' is to be struck dumb as if by a smack in the face.  Now, it's got a more general use these days than just in the North. I've heard it used throughout the South of England - I've heard it used abroad; it's now very widely used to be gobsmacked. Now, why? Because it became a very fashionable expression by people on television, not everybody on television, I'm thinking especially of people like sports.personalities having a terrible day, something horrible happens: footballers in particular are always saying that they're gobsmacked at something happening. 

Saddo

There are quite a few familiarity markers in English - words which take on an ending to make the word sound much more familiar, or everyday, or down to earth. Ammunition becomes 'ammo'; a weird person becomes 'weirdo'; aggravation becomes 'aggro'. They like it in Australia a lot - "good afternoon", they don't say that so often, but 'arvo', 'arvo' is the abbreviation for afternoon in Australia.  And in the 1990s you had this rather interesting word 'saddo' - that's the adjective sad with this 'o' ending, spelt with two ds: s-a-d-d-o. It came in as a kind of a rude word really, a mocking word for somebody seen as socially inadequate, or somehow rather unfashionable, or contemptible in some way. You might hear somebody say, "oh, he's a real saddo" or "she's a real saddo" - it can be for male or for females.  It's from the word sad of course, from oh, way back in the 1930s, where 'sad' here doesn't mean miserable, it means pathetic, and that was a use of sad that came in at that time. It's a sense in other words that's been developing for quite a long time. In actual fact, you can take that sense of sad and trace it all the way back to Shakespeare, although he never said 'saddo'. 

Luvvy

Have you noticed how common the 'y' ('ie') ending is in English as a sort of colloquial suffix? A familiarity marker perhaps is a better way of talking about it. You talk about the telly - it's a television. You talk about your auntie - instead of your aunt. Of course, there's mummy and daddy as well. People from Australia are Aussies as well as Australians, and of course in proper names you talk about Charles and Charlie, or Susan and Susie. Very very common suffix.  Not surprising then to find that new words every now and then come into the language which use it, and the one that has attracted a lot of interest recently is 'luvvy' and 'luvvies' - l-u-v-v-y and l-u-v-v-i-e-s. Especially in Britain, it's a kind of mockery for actors and actresses, considered to be rather affected - actors, you know, who turn up and call each other 'darling' all the time and go 'mwah' at each other, when they're kissing each other, and people say "oh, listen to those luvvies talking, those poor luvvies - there's lots of luvvy talk going on" - l-u-v-v-y.  Now what's interesting is it's the spelling that's made this word so new, because there already was a word 'lovey' in the language, going back right to the 1960s, spelt l-o-v-e-y. It's a much older term of endearment. I might say "oh, come on, lovey!" meaning ...you might hear from a bus conductor for instance, and it refers simply to you know, 'my dear', and it could be to a man or a woman, more usually to a woman. So, what we've got is a new word 'luvvy' with a different spelling from the old word 'lovey' - now that doesn't happen very often in language change.