A-Z Database
see Red cent
see Tinker’s damn/curse/cuss
see Worth one’s salt
Not worth the candle means worthless or unjustifiable because of the trouble or cost involved and dates from the 1600s. The origin is French and it fi...
see Leave something in the tank.
see Something to crow about
A colloquialism that means unremarkable, not worth mentioning and has been used in this figurative sense since the early 20th century, from the obviou...
A very old English proverb appears in various forms and dates from the time of Chaucer and probably before. Chaucer wrote in Troilus and Criseyde c.13...
Nous means common sense and dates from the late 17th/early 18th century and is a direct borrowing from the Classical Greek nous (vous) meaning mind or...
see Months of the year
An old, anonymous Latin proverb nunc aut numqam dates in English from the 1500s, possibly before.
see Wink wink
US military slang for nuclear weapon first attested in 1959. The verb, to attack with nuclear weapons, is attested from 1962. Nuke meaning to heat or...
When one’s number is up it means doomed to die, British army slang from WWI, with allusion to a soldier’s military number or dog tag.
This word is perhaps best known in Britain as a cricketing term when batsmen will sometimes nurdle the ball around the ground for ones and twos. Batsm...