A-Z Database
This expression is often used by sports commentators to describe a style of play that has much passion but little skill or finesse. It seems to have f...
see Make one’s blood boil
Usually expressed as a resigned impossibility in expressions like “you cannot get blood from a stone”. This way of expressing the impossible is very o...
Meaning that family ties are the strongest is an old proverb that has been around in many different forms. In German, it has been known since the 12th...
Originally, during the early 16th century, blood money was literally the monetary reward for bringing about the death of another. Today it can describ...
A metaphor for a massacre or slaughter; dates from the late 18th/early 19th century.
Common, everyday swear word, which many people mistakenly ascribe to a contraction of by Our Lady, which was an invocation to the mother of Christ dat...
A vodka and tomato juice cocktail dates from the mid-20th century, so called because it is blood red in colour. It is also a reference to Mary I of En...
The word bloody was considered distasteful and vulgar during the 18th and 19th centuries, so this euphemism for it came into use during the late 19th...
To blot one’s copybook is to make a mistake or spoil one’s record. The expression derives from children making blots or ink spots on their school copy...
British slang for very drunk dating from the early 20th century. The origin is obscure so there are only theories among which there is ‘blotter’, a 19...
As in to blow money or blow an opportunity, meaning to waste it, dates from the late 19th century from the allusion of being blown away or cast to the...
Both are idioms for losing one’s temper; blowing a fuse refers to the overloading of an electrical circuit, while blowing a gasket refers to too much...
see Raspberry
This expression describes an overwhelming experience as in, “it blew me away” or “I was blown away”. Although it sounds like a modern expression, it h...