A-Z Database
This expression meaning to settle one’s differences with erstwhile adversaries has been around since the 17th century and comes from the practice of N...
Bus is an abreviation of omnibus and dates from 1832. Back in the 1820s, an omnibus was public, horse-drawn transport. When motorised transport replac...
Slang for pubic hair since the mid-19th century. Bush is now Standard English for the wilds or outback, but was originally an Australian colloquialism...
Bushed meaning tired or exhausted, derives from the allusion to spending time lost in the bush or outback, which, of course, is exhausting, dates from...
During the early 19th century, the original bushwhackers in America, and then later in Australia, were pioneers who literally ‘whacked bushes’ to esta...
Euphemism for defecation, coined in Victorian times, during the mid-19th century, to describe the defecation of children and domestic pets like cats a...
American expression for the effective or practical part of something. For example, the business end of a gun would be the end from which the bullet em...
This is a vacation where one engages in activities that are similar to one’s usual work. The expression dates from the early 20th century and derives...
To bust a gut is a metaphor that means to try very hard at something, from the allusion of straining every ounce of one’s being, including one’s guts....
Chops meaning one’s jaw was Standard English in the early 1500s and then became low informal by the mid-17th century. To bust someone’s chops is Ameri...
A solecism or corruption of burst as both noun and verb that first makes its appearance in English from around 1830. Charles Dickens uses it in severa...
Buster is a chap, a bloke or fellow and is pejorative North American slang that dates from the late 19th century. It derives from the now obsolete, bu...
Today’s meaning and usage is usually descriptive of a Lesbian or woman who is overly masculine. This usage is originally American from c.1940 and has...
To take a butcher’s at something is to look at something. It derives from rhyming slang, butcher’s hook/look, from the early 20th century.
Butt, as in to head butt or hit with the head or horns, dates from the 1200s. Butt, as in a barrel or cask, dates from the 1300s. Butt, as in the shor...