A-Z Database
American slang for a black person dates from the late 19th/early 20th century.
This expression has come to describe people or experiences of a fleeting, inconsequential nature. The source is Longfellow (1807-1882) Tales of a Ways...
Arranged neatly and compactly, as things on board ship should be. Shipshape was more likely to be shipshapen in the late 16th/early 17th century, but...
Australian slang for a male homosexual dates from the 1960s.
see Keep your shirt on
Originally, from the 19th century, this low vulgarism described defecation after a period of constipation. From the early 20th century, it had become...
During the 19th century this was slang for the stomach. Only from the early 20th century did it become figurative for an unpleasant person.
As in does not know shit from Shinola, meaning either very ignorant or very innocent is US military slang from WWII. Shinola is a popular brand of sho...
Very little is left to the imagination in this rather vulgar expression meaning trouble in the form of an unholy mess. It seems to be of US origin fro...
Slang for the rectum dates from the 19th century but since the early 20th century is more frequently used to describe an unpleasant place.
American slang for a privy or toilet, particularly an outhouse, dates from the 19th century. See also built like a brick shit house.
see Never shit on one’s own doorstep
Stop procrastinating and get on with something is originally American and dates from the early 20th century sometimes expressed as the more alliterati...
Shit here is used as an intensifier to mean very or extremely scared and is originally an Americanism from the 1930s. See also shitless.
A person, who by his or her actions causes unnecessary trouble, dates from the late 19th century.