A-Z Database
By some unknown quirk, this word has come to mean, in the UK, a dealer in sewing and dressmaking materials, while in the US it means a dealer in men’s...
There are several meanings for the word hack but in the sense of a hack writer or anyone hired to do routine work, it is an abbreviation of hackneyed....
see Make one’s hackles rise
see Hack
see Chips (had his or hers)
A Roman Catholic prayer to Mary the mother of Christ, from the Latin Ave Maria, that dates from the 14th century. More recently, from the 1930s, was f...
Refers to a little of the alcohol that one imbibed the day before the hangover, taken as a cure for the latter. Used in this figurative sense, it deri...
see Make one’s hair stand on end
see By/to/within a hair’s breadth
see Conniption
see Give the hairy eyeball
This phrase has been used to describe days of calm, blissful weather since the 16th century. Shakespeare used it in this way in 1591 in King Henry VI,...
This alliterative expression describes a person who is in robust and good health. Hale and hearty are words that mean the same thing, namely robust an...
Seems almost too obvious to be a proverb but an old proverb it was when it first appeared in English in John Heywood Proverbs (1546), “Better is half...
To go off half-cocked is to initiate a course of action when not fully prepared and not conversant with all the relevant facts. This figurative use of...