A-Z Database
The metaphorical or idiomatic usage of touchstone is to describe anything which serves to test the genuineness or value of anything; a test, a trial;...
A simile for toughness or durability that is often applied to food (meat) as well as people, and has largely replaced the earlier expression 'tough as...
This expression was probably once a literal reference to a troublesome, stressful day at one’s office of work but it was soon adopted as a figurative...
North American version of hard luck, dates from the late 19th/early 20th century.
Vulgar version of tough luck dates from WWII.
British vulgar version of the American tough luck dates from the 1970s.
A commonplace metaphor for a difficult problem to solve or a difficult situation to overcome; dates from the early 1700s.
This familiar metaphor for physical and/or moral fortitude was coined in 1591 by Shakespeare in Richard III, Act V, Scene III, “the king’s name is a t...
Colloquial expression for a young lover, usually of an older woman, dates from the 1980s.
see Like a tracer bullet
Some people misconstrue the meaning of trade wind as a wind that facilitates trade as in commerce. First attested from the mid-17th century, trade win...
see Blaze a trail
An excerpt from a forthcoming feature film is called a trailer because in the early days of the cinema there were always two movie pictures shown: the...
Intoxicated, drunk, an American slang expression that dates from the late 1920s. Trashed meaning destroyed or libelled in the press dates from the 197...
Rhyming slang for fart, treacle tart/fart, dates from the 1920s. More recently, from the late 20th century, it is also rhyming slang for sweetheart, t...