A-Z Database
This of course means that an actual advantage (in hand) is worth more than the promise of something greater. This proverb in various forms has been ar...
A view of the landscape from above i.e. the view a bird would have and dates in this literal sense from the late 16th/early 17th century. By the late...
In golf, birdie is a score one under par for an individual hole. The origin is from late 19th century American slang when a bird of a shot meant a gre...
The facts about sex and reproduction as told to children of a certain age. It is not known who actually coined this expression, but the first referenc...
This has been a much sought after delicacy in Chinese cuisine for over 400 years. The nests in question are made from the saliva of two Indonesian spe...
This proverb dates from the 16th century. Early citations in print were often in the form of “birds of a feather fly together” but flock eventually re...
Jocular expression for nakedness, as in ‘the suit’ in which one was born, dates from the early 18th century, c. 1734. It is not known who coined the e...
To take the bit between one’s teeth means to take control of a situation with resolution and determination. This is odd in the sense that if a horse t...
British, possibly Australian, slang for a woman or girl, dates from the early 20th century; the OED cites 1903 as its first usage. Derives possibly fr...
see Another bite at the apple/cherry
Take on more than one can handle. This is an American expression dating from the mid-19th century and derives from the once popular habit of chewing t...
Refrain from speaking out. The expression dates from the 16th century. Shakespeare was fond of the expression and used it in three of his plays. First...
To bite or chew someone's head off is to berate someone severely, or to snap back angrily. It is first cited from the mid-19th century.
To die, American informal dates from the 1970s and derives from a literal interpretation of bite the bullet.
This expression means to steel oneself to perform or finish a task, often unpleasant, that one may have been avoiding or putting off and this figurati...