A-Z Database
A phrase describing something stupendous and wonderful made popular in America and elsewhere during the 1960s deriving from drug culture. A more recen...
Mind boggling and its sister expression the mind boggles derive from the 16th century meaning of boggle meaning to alarm or frighten. We get the words...
Shakespeare’s famous metaphor for the ability to imagine, visualise or remember something was coined in Hamlet Act I, Scene II, “In my mind’s eye, Hor...
According to the OED, the figurative use of the word mine to mean a source of abundant supply dates from 1541, but no citation is given for mine of in...
British slang for female genitalia dates from the 19th century, thought to be of Romany origin. It re-gained popularity as an expression from the 1950...
As new, or like new, first cited from the early 20th century from the allusion to a newly minted coin. A postage stamp in mint condition means unused...
In US law the Miranda rights are the legal requirements of reading the rights to a suspect before arrest and custody. They start with ‘you have the ri...
A hodge-podge, a medley or jumble, dates from the mid-1400s, a reduplication of mash, which is an even older word for a mixture and, more latterly fro...
This expression is usually used in the negative i.e. a person who never misses a trick is someone who is never fooled by trickery. The expression date...
A miss is as good as a mile means that a miss, whether a narrow one or one a mile away, amounts to the same thing i.e. a miss is a miss no matter by h...
To miss the boat is to miss an opportunity, miss the point or meaning or to be late for something and dates from the early 20th century when sea trave...
When used figuratively it means to miss an opportunity and it took on this figurative meaning in the first decade of the 20th century. Neville Chamber...
Mission creep is a process, by which a campaign or mission’s objectives escalate over time by gradual, almost imperceptible degrees, often with undesi...
All the evidence points to British slang for an air raid siren and then army slang for the German Nebelwerfer Mortar, both from WWII. (It was never, a...
Mob is of course a common English word for an unruly crowd or rabble, the word dating from the 17th century. In the sense of organised crime or the ma...