It was John Stanley who drew this expression to my attention (when I was on his show on 2GB) as a humorously long-winded way of saying ‘a lie.’
But in its original context that’s not exactly what it meant.
In 1906 there was a debate in the British parliament about the status of Chinese workers in South Africa.
They had been referred to as being ‘in slavery.’
Winston Churchill, as Under Secretary at the Colonial Office replied, pointing out that these workers had entered into employment voluntarily and for a limited period, that they received wages, that they could not be bought and sold, and that they could buy their way out of their employment contract by paying seventeen-pounds-ten-shillings.
He concluded that calling this slavery was a ‘terminological in exactitude.’
He seems to have meant something closer to ‘a mistake’ or ‘a vague expression’ or ‘imprecise language’ rather than ‘a lie.’
He was almost immediately misunderstood.
Joseph Chamberlaine stood up in the House and said the Churchill had used eleven syllables, when one syllable—a good old, Anglo-Saxon word (he said)—would have served: the word ‘lie.’
But Churchill almost certainly was not saying anything as blunt or as simple as ‘lie.’
But the expression has been misunderstood in this way ever since.
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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