A-Z Database
To get the last laugh means to come out on top at the very end, usually at someone else’s expense. The expression derives from the 15th century prover...
To be on one’s last legs is to be very near to exhaustion, usefulness or even death. The expression dates from the late 16th century.
The closing and usually definitive remark on a subject dates from the 19th century and led to the expression the last word meaning the ultimate or ver...
One final, desperate attempt or defence dates from the late 17th century and derives from the military sense of a ditch or trench being the last line...
The last straw is the final small difficulty that exasperates to the point of being unbearable. The full expression is the last straw that broke the c...
see Cry all the way to the bank
Rhyming slang, laugh and a joke/smoke, as in I’m going outside for a laugh and a joke, when actually going outside for a smoke. Sometimes, as with mos...
‘Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone’ was coined by the American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) in her poem Solitude...
see Up one’s sleeve
see Last laugh
Presumably, the gurgling sound made by a drain prompted this simile, which according to Eric Partridge is British forces slang from c. 1940.
British slang for the mouth dates from the 1970s.
A laughing stock is an object of ridicule and dates from the early 16th century. It derives from the medieval punishment of placing wrongdoers in the...
It is not known who coined these actual words, but the concept itself is found in the Bible, Proverbs 17:22 “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine....
see Rest on one’s laurels