A-Z Database
Slang for a woman’s breasts, derives from rhyming slang, Bristol City/titty and dates from the mid-20th century.
Broach is an old word from The Middle Ages meaning to pierce or thrust through, from the Old French brocher, from which we get the modern culinary ter...
American slang for a woman dates from the early 20th century, perhaps suggestive of a woman’s hips or possibly from the earlier American English expre...
A metaphor for a general as opposed to a detailed approach to any subject or matter derives from the allusion of painting with a broad paint brush and...
Figuratively, to give someone a broadside is to be verbally aggressive, much the same as giving someone a piece of one’s mind. Originally, it is of co...
see Bankrupt, also Go for broke
see Stuck record
This is a very old word dating from the 15th century. Its root is Anglo-Norman French brocour meaning a small trader or tradesman. Broker in the sense...
Colloquial word for umbrella dates from the late 19th century.
An uproar or commotion, brouhaha has existed as a French expression since the 16th century but was only adopted in English from the late 19th century....
This expression first appears in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century. Chaucer uses the expression twice. Once in the Prologue to descr...
Rhyming slang for dead, brown bread/dead, dates from c. 1960.
Originally an Australian slang metaphor for the anus that dates from the 1960s. As a verb, ‘to brown eye someone’ means to expose one’s anus or poster...
To brown nose is an even more vulgar form (if that is possible) of kissing someone’s arse/ass. To brown nose is to act in an obsequious manner in orde...
A brown study is a state of abstraction or deep thought and the expression dates from the early 16th century. Brown is obviously a dark, gloomy colour...