A-Z Database
see Bigger/other fish to fry
see How the other half lives
see Over the top
An exclamation of sharp and sudden pain, first heard and used in America from the early 19th century and now used the world over by English-speaking p...
The park alluded to here is ballpark, the American baseball stadium. This expression is of course American and dates from the 1960s. It can be and is...
Utterly defeated, unconscious and incapacitated, dates from the 1920s and derives from boxing where a defeated boxer has been ‘counted out’ for failin...
see Sticks
see Always something new out of Africa
In the sense of forbidden or beyond limits of accepted standards, or in sporting parlance, beyond accepted areas of play, dates from the mid-19th cent...
Out of alignment or out of proper order dates from the late 16th/early 17th century and is of unknown origin. The OED lists kilter as a word meaning g...
see Left field
Improper, not in accordance with accepted norms and dates in this figurative sense from the late 18th century. It derives from the earlier military se...
see Jump out of one’s skin and Play out of one’s skin
Wits is an old English collective noun for mind or mental faculties. Out of one’s wits, therefore, is to be out of one’s mind, hence scared or frighte...
To be out of pocket means to have lost or wasted money in some enterprise or other and dates from the late 1600s. Out-of-pocket expenses refer to expe...