A-Z Database
see High dudgeon
Due diligence is an expression usually used in law or business to mean reasonable care and caution in buying, selling, investigating, or giving profes...
Since the mid-18th century, a duffer is one who peddles sham or fake merchandise. From this, the adjective duff took on the meaning of something that...
Some of us will remember the duffle coats with toggles that were popular during the 1960s. Duffle is an anglicised form of Duffel, the town in modern...
Rhyming slang for fork, Duke of York/fork, dates from the late 19th century. See also Dukes.
Dukes is American boxing and street fighting slang for fists, dates from the mid-19th century and gives rise to the expression ‘put up your dukes’, wh...
Like carpe diem this aphorism from the Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC) is better known in the original Latin than its English translation, “It is sweet an...
see Dull as ditchwater/dishwater
Alliteration is the driving force in this well-known simile for dullness or boredom, which of course stems from the torpor or stagnation of water in a...
A soft-nosed bullet that expands on impact so-called because of the bullets typically manufactured at the British military arsenal at Dum Dum near Cal...
Dumb is US colloquial for foolish or stupid, and dates from 1823. Dumb as an ox is a simile for a stupid person that dates from the late 17th/early 18...
A dumb-bell is an exercise weight, rather like the heavy, iron clappers of a church-bell but without the bell-shroud and therefore dumb because it mad...
A small, manual elevator built into large houses or hotels for removing dishes etc from rooms. Sometimes a side table or trolley for reserve plates an...
Everyone knows what a dunce is, but not everyone knows that it derives from the name of a 13th century Franciscan scholar called John Duns Scotus who...
A blockhead or stupid person, according to the OED, probably derives from the Dutch donder meaning thunder, in the sense of reverberating sounds, whic...