What I would like to do is to over time, post different etymologies for various phrases and words. This offers both insight into the types of words and phrases you encounter on your end of the world (try to translate where possible) and maybe even teach you something about the origins of the thing you're saying as well

now to show there is a no hold barred.. I'll start with a rather nasty one which comes in various flavors..
Fornicating the Canine, screwed the pooch, F-cking the dog..
This term has come up for me a number of times, and I just had to explain it to someone, as they themselves had not encountered the term. The phrase to "F-ck the dog" meant that the person was doing nothing, as in their activity was about as useful as...... it later evolved to "screwed the pooch" which meant a large mistake.. which draws up unfortunate ideas of a bottle of vodka and an early morning utterance of "oops" .. :S
At any rate. here's a rather decent explaination
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=474661
Have you got a word of phrase that's come up a lot lately? or an interesting etymology you've heard recently? share it!