SHAGGY DOG:TO HAVE More Than You Can Shake a Stick Atis to have far more of anything that you really need. This expression is said to have a farming origin, in particular sheep farming. If a shepherd had more sheep than he could control with this crook (stick), then it is easy to see how the term came to be applied.
However, another school of thought suggests an American origin of a military kind. After George Washington was once seen waving a ceremonial wooden sword over the British troops he had recently defeated, other American generals began to use the expression to justify themselves when they had not been quite as successful as the great man himself was in battle.
"We had more men to fight than you could wave a stick at" was apparently a common excuse for failure on the battlefield.
To take a sharp blow in the Gooliescan bring a tear to a gentleman's eye and quite ruin his afternoon. (It is no laughing matter.) This slang expression first became used in England during the 1930s as an inoffensive and comical way of describing a man's pride and joy.
Queen Victoria's army, who, in the name of empire building, went off to make new friends around the world at the point of their bayonets in an attempt to paint the world map red, brought this expression back from India with them in the mid-1800s. Quite simply, the Hindustani word for "balls" is goolies.
A Tea Caddyis a place we store our tea leaves or tea bags. Well, at least our grandparents did. The phrase derives from the Malaysian word kati for measurement, slightly over a pound, of tea traditionally sold throughout Southeast Asia.
A "tea-kati" would be what was brought home from the market. The popular idiom used for an errand boy, or something that "carries", could also have something to do with the expression (see also Caddy).
When a person is having High Jinks, they will be lively and excited - basically having a good time. This term has a Scottish origin and can be traced to the late 1800s and early 1900s when drinking parties at the great houses north of the border were at their most decadent.
During this time there was one popular game where dice were thrown to see who among the group would have to drink a huge and potent cocktail which was likely to have the loser ricocheting along the corridors in no time at all. Then the dice would be thrown again and the loser this time would pay for the drink. Walter Scott in his novel Guy Mannering(1815) stated how "high jinx" was the term used for this sort of forfeit game, although not a drinking game: "The frolicsome company had begun to practice the ancient and now forgotten pastime of High Jinx. This game was played in several ways. Most frequently the company threw the dice and those upon whom the lot fell were obliged to assume and maintain for a certain time, a certain fictitious character or to repeat a certain number".
• Extracted from Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheepby Albert Jack (Penguin Books)