A-Z Database
Pet name for a rabbit since the early 1600s. Bunny is the diminutive of ‘bun’, an earlier dialectical word of unknown origin, now archaic, that meant...
A vengeful, dangerous woman - derives from the movie Fatal Attraction (1987) in which the jilted woman played by Glenn Close kills a pet rabbit belong...
Rhyming slang for earner, Bunsen burner/a nice little earner, signifying a lucrative small business dates from the mid to late 20th century. It is als...
This expression is chiefly used in law and dates from the late 1500s. It means that the task or responsibility for providing evidence or proof of some...
see Get one's fingers burned/burnt
Whether boats or bridges are burnt, the expression has been used figuratively only since the 19th century in the sense of staking everything on going...
The phrase midnight oil was coined by Francis Quarles in his literary work Emblems in 1635. “We spend out midday sweat, our midnight oil; we tire the...
From earliest times, sacrifices have been made to religious deities in the form of ritual burning of animals and other possessions as an act of revere...
see Split one’s sides laughing
To suddenly and effusively start to laugh, dates from the early 1700s.
There is evidence to suggest that people, and children especially, have been blowing soap bubbles for millennia. The Babylonians were making soap in 2...
A metaphor that is generally used to describe over-crowding dates from the early 20th century and derives from the obvious allusion to an over-tight g...
see Gone for a Burton
This is the last line of a poem by American poet Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) titled American Names written in 1929. It was also the title of a b...
This expression meaning to refuse to confront or acknowledge a problem has been around since the early 17th century and comes from the mistaken belief...