A-Z Database
This simile is first attested from the mid-20th century and sometimes appears as soft as a baby’s bottom. It is not known who coined the expression.
Today in America, snake oil means rubbish or nonsense, much the same as poppycock. Back in the 1920s, snake oil referred to fake or sham remedies that...
Snatch has long been slang for an illicit, hasty, sexual encounter or copulation from at least the 17th century. Not long afterwards its meaning was e...
The first citation of this well-worn cliché is American from the time of the US-Mexican War (1846-48) when a US regiment was said to have snatched vic...
This is an American expression from the late 19th century for light, rubber-soled shoes, so-called because they were noiseless and one could sneak up...
As a verb, to sneak means to move or creep along in a furtive, secretive manner and derives from the Old Norse snikja to creep or crawl. Sneak has bee...
see Not to be sneezed at
see Live on the smell/sniff of an oil/oily rag
This can be a verb, meaning to inform or to tell tales, or it can be the person that does so. It dates in this sense from the late 18th century and de...
British slang for a kiss or kissing session dates from the late 1930s and is possibly a variant of snug in the sense of snuggling up.
Originally, means the loud exhaling of breath through the nose of a man or animal and dates from mid-14th century. Later, during the 17th century, it...
Originally a person or an animal that snorts i.e. makes a loud, noisy exhaling of breath from the nose. (See also Snort.) This usage dates from the 14...
Royal Navy slang for a midshipman. Dates from the late 19th century, and is thought to derive from the buttons worn on the sleeves of midshipmens' uni...
British slang for cigarette since the late 19th century, originated amongst prison inmates where the touching of one’s nose was a silent request for a...
This expression is so old and so often cited that it is difficult to nail down an exact origin. Suffice to say that the Bible, Chaucer, and Shakespear...