A-Z Database
see Purple patch
A purple patch has come to mean a period of extraordinary success or good fortune, often short-lived, and dates in this sense from the early 20th cent...
see Purple patch
Try to make too much of an opportunty, or go too far; dates from the early 20th century.
To lavish or spend more than one is accustomed to, usually in celebration of special occasions. It was originally naval slang for buying a round of dr...
To push the envelope means to go beyond commonly accepted boundaries and has nothing whatsoever to do with stationery. Push the envelope is originally...
see Panic button
To push up daisies is a euphemism for being dead and buried in a grave and hence ‘pushing up daisies’. Variants of the expression date from the mid-19...
see Z’s
Puss has been slang for the female pudenda since the 16th century from the allusion to something soft and furry, like a pussy-cat. Puss, pussy and pus...
Act cautiously and timidly as if reluctant to commit to a definite course of action, dates from the late 19th century, an Americanism that derives fro...
see Put on a brave face/front
Chiefly US informal for telling someone to stop talking or going on about something, dates from the early 1900s, from the obvious allusion to closing...
The figurative expression to put a damper on something, meaning to suppress an initiative or impede progress dates from the mid-19th century. A damper...
see blow the lid/cover off something