A-Z Database
Presumed licence to boast about one’s accomplishments, especially after winning or achieving something, dates from c. 1977.
Drunk, intoxicated, rhyming slang, Brahms and Liszt/pissed, dates from the 1930s.
In America, where the expression originated, it is brain trust. In Britain and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, it is usually brains trust, in...
Originally. a brainstorm was a sudden impulse or mental disorder and this usage dates from the late 19th century. Half a century later, brainstorming...
The forcible indoctrination or persuasion through propaganda and salesmanship, the word is first recorded from c.1950. It is a literal translation of...
This is simply a more emphatic way of saying brand new where the word spanking acts as an intensifier. The first known usage of brand spanking new is...
Brand new' has acquired almost universal usage, where 'brand' is an intensifier for the word 'new'. But If something is new, then what has been added...
Was originally known as brandy-wine, which was the result of distilling wine. Its meaning derives from the Old Norse brand meaning fire, signifying wi...
Brass meaning money dates from the 16th century. (See also Where there’s muck, there’s brass). Because of its association as a cheap imitator of gold,...
The farthing was traditionally the smallest and lowest value coin in Britain and existed in various forms from the 13th century until 1960 when it cea...
Brass hat, top brass and big brass mean more or less the same thing. It is British slang for a high-ranking military officer. It dates from the 19th c...
see Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey
The meaning of this expression as in “get down to brass tacks” is to focus on the fundamental issues or get to the basic facts. The origin, however, h...
British military slang for disgruntled and fed up dates from the late 1920s and derives, supposedly, from the chores of polishing brass fittings on sh...
see Boracic lint