It was one hundred years ago this year that the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand for the first time. In 1926 she was a sensation, and the talk of the entire nation. The result was that she inspired the dessert we still know today as a ‘pavlova’.

However, the pronunciations of the ballerina and the dessert are not the same. The dancer was Anna PAV-lah-vah while the famous meringue-based dessert is pronounced pav-LOH-vah. Both Australia and New Zealand claim to have invented ‘pavlova’. According to one story: in 1935, the chef of the Hotel Esplanade in Perth, Herbert Sachse, created the ‘pavlova’ – the dessert made of a large soft-centred meringue, topped with whipped cream and fruit – to celebrate the visit of that great Russian ballerina (she had made a return visit in 1933). On the other hand, the first appearance in print of the word ‘pavlova’ (meaning a dessert of some sort) is from New Zealand seven years earlier, in a booklet put out by Davis Gelatine called Davis Dainty Dishes.

However, since the ‘pavlova’ we now cook includes no gelatine, that is almost certainly a reference to some other sweet and not to the meringue-based one that is known in Australia and New Zealand today – which was, indeed, a genuinely Aussie invention. So, calm down Kiwis – the pavlova is an Aussie creation! At any rate, the origin of the name is not in dispute: it was named in honour of the great Russian dancer.

Aussies seem to have given in to the American cultural hegemony by referring to ‘dollars’ as ‘bucks’. But why bucks? It comes from the 1700s, from the American frontier, when deer hides, or ‘buckskins’ were used in trading. So much so, that in a frontier economy based largely on bartering, buckskins became a form of currency. When the United States adopted the dollar in 1792, ‘buck’ stuck around. The term was already familiar and carried over to paper money. It’s now used around the world because of the global cultural dominance of the US.

Speccie reader Harry asks for the origin of ‘put the wind up someone’. It’s recorded from 1915 which makes it a piece of first world war military slang. It means to make someone feel worried or anxious or tense. The ‘wind’ in this phrase refers to a disturbance, much like a bothersome gust of air. It is, indeed, a well-recorded fact that windy days are often unsettling days.

Teachers say they have more trouble with a class on a windy day than in any other sort of weather. Why? Perhaps because the invisible fingers of the wind ruffle and disturb us? Hence, this expression implies causing someone’s internal equilibrium to be unsettled, thereby inciting anxiety or fear.