A-Z Database
To gain an advantage over someone by reacting faster. This figurative usage dates from the late 19th century and derives, of course, from the allusion...
Do or say something just before someone else does. This figurative usage dates from the 1920s and derives from boxing where an expert boxer tends to d...
see Knock/beat the stuffing out of someone
This means to win a game or a match by such a wide margin that makes it no contest. The expression has been around since the 17th century and hollow i...
From the mid-18th century, ‘daylights’ was slang for ‘the eyes’. ‘To beat/scare the living daylights out of someone’ means either administer a mercile...
Coined by the American media in the 1950s to describe members of the so-called Beat Generation that evolved out of rock ‘n roll. The Russian suffix wa...
The concept behind this expression, if not the actual words, that beauty is perception rather than objective reality, is very old and can be traced ba...
Inner qualities are equally if not more important than the shallow quality of beauty, according to Bartlett’s Familiar quotations was coined by John D...
The concept of beauty sleep dates from the early to mid-19th century (Merriam-Webster cites 1828) when it was thought that sleep during the hours befo...
US slang for the female pudenda from as early as 1927. Beaver fur was renowned for producing the softest, smoothest felt for use in hat and glove maki...
Beck is an obsolete shortened form of beckon dating from the Middle English period (1150-1450) meaning a silent nod of the head or a hand signal. It w...
This has become a figurative expression for a life of ease and luxury. The original was coined by Christopher Marlowe c.1589 in The Passionate Shepher...
A synonym for chaos and confusion, which derives from a contraction of Bethlehem after the Bethlehem Hospital for lunatics in London, which was so nam...
A state of agitation or pre-occupation, as one would experience if one had a bee trapped under one’s headgear. The expression in this form is most pro...
Originally, this was the name given to the extremely thin, almost transparent, film of fermentation crust that sometimes appears at the top of very ol...