A-Z Database
see Take or have a leak
Attributed by most to Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) the Danish theologian and philosopher who used the metaphor to describe the way in which religious...
So-called since the 1400s because anniversaries or fixed feast days after February in such a year, leap or jump by two days not one. If one’s birthday...
see Know/learn/show someone the ropes
Hermann Ebbinghaus, the German psychologist, coined this term in 1855, to explain a mathematical graph where the vertical axis measured a person's pro...
Similar to least or less said the better, this is first attested in English in John Heywood Two Hundred Epigrams (1556), “little said soon amended”. S...
see Least/less said, soonest mended
see Left in the lurch
Leave no stone unturned is one of the many adages that the medieval scholar Erasmus translated from Greek and Roman sources. It means, of course, to m...
A metaphor with many different versions e.g. ‘nothing left in the tank’, ‘little left in the tank’ etc, which mean that reserves or supplies of almost...
see Lead balloon
If something comes out of left field, is out in left field, or comes from left field, it means odd, bizarre or unexpected. The origin is generally ack...
see Holding the baby/bag
Is to be abandoned or placed in a difficult situation without help, dates from the 16th century. It derives from an old medieval board game of French...
see Leave something in the tank