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1. Tod (adj. n.), completely alone—"all on your tod"

a. Cockney rhyming slang—"alone like Tod Sloan"— from James Forman "Tod" Sloan, an orphan from Indiana who became a world-famous jockey at the turn of the 20th century; his autobiography was titled Tod Sloan by Himself.
b. From the Middle English tod, meaning "fox," as in Beatrix Potter's children's story The Tale of Mr. Tod. By extension from foxes' solitary and furtive habits, this came to mean both "cunning" and "loner."
c. In Spanish, todo solo means "all alone"; solo entered English in the 16th century to mean "on your own," but the other half of the phrase was also picked up and shortened from todo to tod.

2. biro (n.), a ballpoint pen

a. The original cheap, quick-drying pen was developed by the American cartoonist and comic-book publisher Charles Biro (1911–1972), who drew many of the early issues of Daredevil Comics.
b. Frenchman Marcel Bich (1914–1994) bought the original ballpoint-pen patent in 1950 and christened his first line Biro, after his birthplace in the village of Biron in the department of Charente-Maritime.
b. Invented by a Hungarian journalist, László József Bíró (1899–1985), who patented the design after experimenting with putting newspaper ink in a fountain pen when he noticed how quickly it dried.

3. doolally (adj.), crazy, demented

a. A corruption of the French expression oh là là, meaning "dear, oh, dear" or "good heavens," and, by extension, "poor crazy thing."
b. From Deolali, a 19th-century British army base in India from which soldiers were shipped home. The heat and long wait led some to develop eccentric behavior known as "Deolali tap" (tap is Urdu for "fever."
c. Dull Alley was a street that ran behind London' s renowned and horrible Bedlam mental hospital in the 18th century and from which desperate inmates could be seen shrieking at the windows; hence doolally.

4. mayonnaise (n.), a sauce made from egg yolks and oil

a. According to Larousse Gastronomique, the word was originally moyeunaise, from the old French moyeu, meaning "egg yolk."
b. In 1589, the Duke of Mayenne lost the Battle of Arques due to taking an inordinate amount of time to eat a dish of chicken in white sauce forever after to be known as mayennaise.
c. When the French liberated Port Mahon, the capital of Minorca, from British occupation in 1756, they took back with them to France the recipe for delicious Spanish aioli, calling it Mahonnaise.

5. canoodle (v.), to kiss and cuddle

a. Originally from the German—probably via emigrants to the United States—19th-century slang verb knudeln, meaning "to cuddle."
b. In days when young ladies and gentlemen had to be chaperoned, the couple would stroll by a river to find a canoe for hire; the chaperone would fall behind and let the lovebirds paddle off alone to canoodle.
c. A 1920s American college-student coinage, derived from the colloquial usage of the word noodle, meaning "to fiddle" or "mess around"—and, by extension, to mess around with girls.

6. blotto (adj.), extremely drunk

a. From the originally Middle English blot, meaning a liquid stain or the act of absorbing liquid—and thus descriptive of the way in which drunkenness occurs.
b. The acronym for a blocking reagent known as "bovine lacto transfer technique optimizer," used by dairy farmers, which in the 1950s was discovered to have Mickey Finn properties when added to drinks.
c. Named for the French tricycle company Blotto Frères. Making daily supply deliveries to WWI frontline troops, the trikes' two-in-front-one-behind wheel arrangement made them wobble and tip over drunkenly in the Flanders mud.