Revealed: real Gordon Bennett

The exclamation and 33 other words have been updated in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) after the public helped to trace their history.

Among them are "wazzock", now listed in the OED a stupid or annoying person, after it was found in a 1976 recording by British folk singer Mike Harding.

And "Gordon Bennett", listed as a euphemism for Gorblimey, was found in a 1937 novel by James Curtis called You're in the Racket, too! which includes the phrase: "He stretched and yawned. Gordon Bennett, he wasn't half tired."

Another is flip-flop, as the plastic sandal was called in an RAAF serviceman's 1958 customs and excise declaration upon leaving Malaya.

The BBC's Balderdash and Piffle series uncovered the derivations with the help of viewers who sent in the earliest uses, and possible explanations for, a list of modern words as well as a few older phrases.

The OED drafted a new definition for the word "bollocks" after viewers found the word was used as a term of praise by Superbike magazine in September 1981 when it dubbed a scantily-clad woman with a motorcycle "the Absolute Bollocks".

The television show also unearthed an origin for "loo" in a 1936 letter from actress Lady Diana Cooper to her husband Duff Cooper, sent from Tangiers, in which she writes: "We've come to this very good hotel - your style, with a pretty Moorish bath..in every room and a lu-lu a cote."

The OED's etymologist, Tania Styles, said of the letter: "It couldn't really refer to anything else. It has long been suspected that this euphemism for toilet was born in an aristocratic setting, and this blue-blooded evidence adds weight to this theory."

The programme appealed for proof of someone being called "one sandwich short of a picnic" before 1993, "daft as a brush" pre-1945 and "kinky" earlier than 1959.

It also asked for the etymology of recent entrants to the language like wazzock, dogging and regime change.

Evidence was submitted to the Oxford English Dictionary's compilers and, if the experts agreed, it was included for updated editions.

Last year's Wordhunt provided updated information on the ploughman's lunch, the ninety-nine ice cream and the full monty among others.

This year's list contained 40 words and their earliest known usage. The OED agreed to update 34 after considering the new evidence.

To join in viewers needed to submit a document or sound recording, bearing an earlier date, containing the word in question.

OED chief editor John Simpson said: "What's great is that people have found the sort of earlier evidence which our own researchers couldn't realistically have tracked down, for example the hand-written customs declaration form which gave us "flip-flops" or the policeman's notebook which provided "TWOC" (taken without owners consent) in 1972."

* The full list can be found at bbc.co.uk/balderdash.