1862; see Latin (adj.). The notion is the nations whose languages descend from Latin. Related: Latin American (adj.), 1871.
"right away, promptly," 1917, American English, representing U.S. soldiers' mangled adaptation of French tout de suite.
by 1823 in representations of Persian or Oriental phrases, or sometimes in reference to seven seas forming part of the Hindu cosmology or to the Talmudists' supposed seven seas of Israel (some of which are obscure lakes); see seven. It is in Burton's "Arabian Nights" (1886) and probably was popularized by one of the versions of Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam (from which Kipling got it as a book title). To the extent that the phrase has been applied, awkwardly, to global geography, they would be the Arctic, Antarctic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian oceans.
1942, American English slang, the first element probably a nonsense reduplication of suit (compare reet pleat, drape shape from the same jargon).
large venomous snake of American tropics, 1817, from French, "lance-head," literally "iron of a lance." So called for its shape.
1940, from George H. Gallup (1901-1984), U.S. journalist and statistician, who in 1935 set up the American Institute of Public Opinion.
local or state legal restrictions on black persons, free or slave, 1774, American English, though the first reference is to French colonies in the West Indies.
Chinese dish of stir-fried noodles served with sauce, 1898, American English, from Chinese ch'ao mien, said to mean "fried dough."
Whereas the majority of Chinese culinary terms in English have become established since the Second World War, with the rise of the Chinese restaurant, chow mein belongs to an earlier stratum, introduced via the West Coast of America in the early years of the twentieth century, and institutionalized in the 1920s and 1930s as the archetypal Sino-American dish. [Ayto, "Diner's Dictionary"]
