A-Z Database
see Off the mark
The figurative meaning is to be mentally or physically quick off the mark and dates from the 1950s. The allusion is of course to the starting blocks u...
Quicksilver is the older name for mercury, from Old English, which dates from before 1150. It is mentioned in Chaucer, late 14th century. It has also...
Quid is British informal for a pound sterling, dates from the late 1600s and was used for older coins known as sovereigns. Despite many different etym...
To be quids in means to be in profit or ahead of the game in a financial sense. The expression dates from the early 20th century and is the only plura...
This very old simile dates from the 1500s. As still as a mouse is even older from the 14th century. Shakespeare used the expression, “As quiet as a la...
According to the OED, quiz is first attested as a noun from 1782 when it meant an odd, eccentric person and the origin is unknown. As a verb, it is fi...
Rabbit, as in to prattle or to chatter annoyingly derives from rhyming slang, rabbit and pork/talk, dates from the late 1930s. Rabbit, as a contemptuo...
A rabbit punch is a blow to the back of the neck and is illegal in boxing. It is so-called because it resembles the way gamekeepers kill rabbits, with...
US slang for a woman’s breasts, dates from the 1990s.
To rack wine is a technical term for siphoning or draining wine from one container to another, leaving its lees, the sediments of dried yeasts and oth...
When something goes to rack and ruin it means complete destruction or worthlessness and unlike rack one’s brains, it has nothing to do with rack as in...
The use of rack in this sense comes from the 14th century use of the word meaning a framework, indicating the framework of how the lamb ribs have been...
When we rack our brains, it means we stretch them mentally and in this sense it is a figurative allusion to the rack, the gruesome medieval torture de...
This expression has been around since the mid-15th century and its association with the medieval torture device is obvious. See also rack one’s brains...