A-Z Database
Drift as in to get someone’s drift dates from the early 16th century. Drift here means current or flow and is used figuratively to mean the conscious...
RAF slang for the sea dates from c. 1920.
Means to out-drink someone, as if in a drinking contest, from the allusion to the loser sliding, drunk under the table at the end of the drinking bout...
Has the social ritual of toasting one another with drinks anything to do with the toasted bread that we sometimes eat? The answer is most certainly ye...
Public school slang from the early 20th century for a weak, ineffectual person has etymological connections to wet that means the same thing.
see Into a corner
see Up the wall
To be in the driving seat is generally thought to be more British, while to be in the driver’s seat is more American. They both mean the same thing, i...
Like flies' means 'in large numbers' and dates from the late 16th/early 17th century. To 'drop like flies' dates from around the same time and means t...
To drop a brick is to make a clumsy, indiscreet, embarrassing mistake or remark, from the obvious allusion of clumsily dropping a house brick that cou...
See Bundle
A clanger is an indiscreet, embarrassing mistake or remark that reverberates for all to hear or witness and, if you drop one, then you are deemed to h...
Make a mistake or miss an opportunity, dates from the mid-20th century and derives from virtually any ball sport, baseball, cricket, rugby, American F...
These idioms generally omit the phrase 'of water' in phrases that strictly speaking should be 'a drop of water in a bucket of water' or 'a drop of wa...
Why do we use the word drop in the construction of this everyday expression? It becomes obvious, however, as soon as we think of the phrase ‘drop a le...