A-Z Database
Opening Pandora’s Box is to cause great trouble and strife and the expression in English dates from the 1500s, although it was also known to the ancie...
Alarm or emergency device activated by means of a button, derives from the bell-warning devices on American B-17 and B-24 bombers during WWII, which s...
A state of high alert, often used in a comical context, but in reality was far from comical when first cited during the First World War. The first cit...
It is called a pantry because it was originally used in the 1400s to store bread, from the Old French paneterie, Latin panis and modern French pain fo...
This expression became popular after WWII when it was used by the then Communist Chinese regime to describe their opponents, in particular the USA. Pa...
A condiment prepared from dried sweet, red peppers. Paprika is simply Hungarian and Serbo-Croat for pepper and entered the English language during the...
Par for the course constitutes blatant misuse of the golfing term because it means average. Whereas par for the course in golfing terms means excellen...
Originally Australian and New Zealand informal expression for very drunk, dates from c. 1910.
Since the early 17th century, this word has been used in a slightly derogatory sense, as a collective noun for miscellaneous, superfluous or over-comp...
An apologetic expression that follows a swear word or profanity and asks to be excused or pardoned, in a coy attempt to pass it off as French. It was...
Australian slang for defecate, also sometimes expressed as ‘choke/strangle a darkie’, dates from the late 20th/early 21st century.
To park the bus is a football (soccer) term, which means to play an ultra-defensive style of play with the objective of denying the opposing team any...
From the Aleutian parka, a weatherproof jacket with hood, as first worn by Aleuts and Eskimos, dates from the late 19th century.
The American equivalent of the British car park dates from c.1920, where spaces for cars are divided into lots or portions.
British colloquial word for nippingly cold or chilly, which according to the OED is of unknown origin and first attested from 1898, but Eric Partridge...