A-Z Database
The notion of being more fearful of fear than anything else is frequently encountered in literature. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt used it in his...
This expression means from one extreme to the other. Feast and famine have long been juxtaposed throughout literature but using different words. The B...
A feather in one’s cap signifies a laudatory achievement. The expression has been used in this figurative sense since the 18th century. The wearing of...
First used c.1950s to describe the frenetic feeding habits of sharks once they have smelled blood; by the 1960s, the phrase is being used figuratively...
Whether one feels something in one’s bones or one’s water they both mean the same thing i.e. that one has an intuition about something. The bones vers...
see Blues
see Feel in one’s bones/water
To have feet of clay signifies vulnerability, instability or weakness. The source is the Bible where Daniel interprets a dream for Nebuchadnezzar of B...
Spirited, energetic and animated, feisty is a unique American word that has spread throughout the English-speaking world and dates from the late 19th...
This expression derives from the title of a poem written by Rudyard Kipling in 1911, The Female of the Species.
Theatrical term for an attractive and dangerous woman, who brings about disaster and tragedy, dates from the mid-19th century from the French for fata...
To fence is to purchase/sell stolen goods with guilty knowledge, or a person who does so. It was originally British slang that dates from the early 16...
This has now become a popular British expression for so-called injury or stoppage time that football (soccer) referees add on at the end of a match. T...
A state of extreme agitation, excitement or intensity, the expression dates from the mid-19th century. Pitch is used here in the sense of a high level...
Not in abundance, scarce, i.e. at widely spaced intervals, dates from the late 17th century.