A-Z Database
British slang for annoyed or fed up, dates from c.1946.
British slang for raining hard dates from c. 1950.
Both these expressions are examples of echoic, imitative words that often enter the language, in this instance from the early 1500s, and represent the...
This is the Middle English (1400s) use of the word pitch meaning to erect or set up.
‘Plain as a pikestaff’ means obvious or very clear and dates from the mid-1500s, before this, the expression was actually ‘plain as a pack staff’, whi...
Plain here means obvious or easy to see or understand and is the most modern of the many ‘as plain as’ similes and dates from the mid to late 19th cen...
Yet another ‘as plain as’ simile, meaning obvious or very clear and dates from the mid-19th century. It has largely been replaced by the shorter plain...
Something that is obvious or very clear, attributed to Francois Rabelais in 1552 by Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, but Rabelais was being translated...
A drab, unattractive girl or woman first attested from 1912. Other than the obvious rhyme no one knows why the name Jane was singled out. The often-en...
We all know what it means now - an easy, uncomplicated task of any description, and in this figurative sense, the expression dates from the late 18th/...
Rhyming slang for feet, plates of meat/feet, dates from the late 19th century.
To play both ends against the middle is an American expression that dates from the late 19th century. It describes a strategy of duplicity whereby one...
To play cat and mouse with someone is to behave towards them as if one were a cat toying with a mouse. In hunting mice, cats tend to toy and play with...
see Ducks and drakes
To play fast and loose is to be unreliable, inconstant and deceitful. The idiom dates from the 1500s and derives from a cheating game called fast and...