A-Z Database

A-Z Database

All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C U next Tuesday

see See you next Tuesday


Cab

See Taxi


Caboodle

see Kit and caboodle


Cack handed

Cack handed means left handed but has also come to mean clumsy or awkward, simply because left handed people appear so to right handed people. Cack on...

Read More


Cad

A cad is someone who behaves dishonourably or contemptibly dates from the early 19th century. It derives from the word cadet, which in the early 17th...

Read More


Caddie

see Cad


Cadenza

A cadenza is a musical term in the form of a spirited musical flourish towards the close of the first or last movement of a concerto. To have a cadenz...

Read More


Cahoots

see In cahoots


Cain and Abel

British rhyming slang for ‘table’, Cain and Abel/table, dates from 1857.


Cake-hole

British slang for mouth from the early to mid-20th century. Its first appearance in print is c. 1940. The American version is pie-hole.


Cakes and ale

see All beer and skittles


Cakewalk

A cakewalk is any endeavour that can be accomplished easily without any great effort. The expression is American and dates from the 1870s. It has its...

Read More


Call a spade a spade

This expression has been popular in England since the mid-16th century and means to talk bluntly and explicitly, sometimes to the point of rudeness. A...

Read More


Call it a day

Stop an activity or quit something temporarily, originally American, first attested from c. 1840 and now Standard English.


Call it quits

End a dispute or contest and agree that honours are even, originally American, first attested from c. 1890 and now Standard English.


back to top