A-Z Database
To live high on the hog means to enjoy an affluent and luxurious lifestyle. The expression is American, dates from the early 20th century and refers t...
This American expression first attested from the 1880s describes an affluent spender, a big player or gambler, from the connotation of rolling gamblin...
This expression is originally American and can have a variety of meanings depending on the context. It was probably first used in America from the mid...
Highbrow can be used as a noun to describe an intellectual but can also be used adjectivally as in highbrow literature. It is an Americanism that date...
American slang meaning absurdly pompous or bombastic dates from the mid-19th century of obscure origin, but perhaps deriving from fluting where high-p...
see Hijack
US slang first attested from the late 19th century as in to hightail it out of here, meaning to leave quickly. It derives from animals, horses, deer e...
Sometimes spelt highjack but more usually as hijack, an Americanism that dates from the 1920s, specifically the prohibition era, when shipments of liq...
Since the early 19th century was dialectical for tramping or marching but from the 1920s has become Standard English for walking for pleasure and/or e...
see Not worth a hill/row of beans
Hip is an American slang expression that dates from the late 19th/early 20th century and is a term of approbation that means 'with it' or informed. It...
This way of starting a communal cheer has been around since the 18th century but no one knows why the cheer (hooray or hurrah) is preceded by the word...
Nib used to be slang for an upper class person or toff in the late 18th/early 19th century and is possibly a variation of nob, which was slang for a p...
This quotation is famously attributed to Henry Ford although he never actually said it. What he said in an interview with Charles N. Wheeler of the Ch...
see Brick wall