A-Z Database
British slang for fooling about, dawdling or wasting time dates from the late 19th/early 20th century. See also fiddle-fart about/around
Similar to a fart in a trance i.e. disorientated, confused, not knowing which colander hole to exit, dates from the early 20th century.
To act like a fart in a trance is to be disorientated, drowsy or not with it, sometimes expressed as a wet fart in a trance. According to Eric Partrid...
Farthing, an old, obselete British coin, is a contraction of 'fourth thing' meaning that it was one fourth or a quarter of a penny. It ceased to be le...
Fascism now describes any extreme, authoritarian right wing views or behaviour, exemplified by the right wing political movement founded by Benito Mus...
see Play fast and loose
see Quick/fast out of the (starting) blocks
Advance a person or project rapidly is American from the early 1960s, before that it was a horseracing term.
Fat chance is an American expression in seeming negation of slim chance but through irony and sarcasm means the same thing i.e. little or no chance at...
The fat is in the fire is an ancient expression that is first found in English in John Heywood Proverbs (1546). It obviously derives from the way fat...
see It’s not over till the fat lady sings
Fat lot of good and fat lot of sense etc date from the mid-1500s and are used in an ironic sense to mean the very opposite. See also Fat chance.
This means all the produce and nourishment that the countryside can offer. The origin is the Bible Genesis 43:18, “And I will give you the good of the...
see Sword of Damocles
A stupid person, originally an Americanism that dates from the mid-19th century.