A-Z Database
Wet behind the ears is a metaphor for a novice or beginner and the evidence seems to suggest that this is an American expression from the early 20th c...
Since at least the late 1600s, wet blankets were used to extinguish fires. By the mid-19th century it had become figurative for a person who threw a d...
see Fart in a trance
Originally, from the early 1600s, a wet nurse was a woman employed to suckle the infant of another, the opposite of a dry nurse who looked after an in...
Whistle has been a jocular name for the mouth or throat since The Middle Ages. To wet one’s whistle is simply to have a drink of something. This expre...
A fair whack meaning a just portion or share is British slang and dates from the late 18th/early 19th century, presumably from having whacked or cut s...
American slang for male masturbation dates from the early 20th century. Most of the words connected with male masturbation have an association with sl...
In the sense of describing something unusually large or big, as in ‘a whacking great rump steak’, is British slang from the early 19th century. See al...
A great time, a greatly enjoyable time, where the word whale is used as an intensifier describing something on a very large , great scale, with the o...
see Oh what a tangled web we weave
see Give someone what for
Sometimes in the form of what goes round comes round means that for every action, there is a consequence, which can be good or bad. It is a fairly mod...
see Just what the doctor ordered
see Knowing what's what
A modern form of 'what's-his-name', a phrase used when one cannot remember the name of person. 'What-his-face' dates from the mid-1960s.