A-Z Database
Shakespeare’s famous metaphor for the downside of life is part of Hamlet’s even more famous soliloquy, to be or not to be from Hamlet (c.1600) Act III...
An older man who spends money on younger women in return for sex/companionship dates from the early 20th century and is American in origin. The allusi...
Sun is over the yard arm is a British expression dating from the late 19th century that means it is time for the first alcoholic drink of the day. The...
see Days of the week
One’s very best clothes, so-called because they were worn to church on a Sunday, dates from the early 1600s.
A Sunday punch is a boxer’s very best punch, usually a knockout blow, and dates from c. 1915 and probably derives from Sunday best in the sense of sav...
An American idiom from the 1960s and still in use today that describes a fairly downmarket type of cuisine, usually associated with steakhouses, where...
This common and well-known expression that means browsing or searching for information on the Internet was coined by an American librarian at the Univ...
see Chinese cut
Suss as in to suss something out or to have something sussed, derives from an abbreviation of the word suspect. It was originally underworld/police sl...
see One swallow does not make a summer
The fable that swans sing shortly before their death is extremely ancient. Plato (c.428-438 BC) makes mention of it in his Dialogues, as does Chaucer...
see Down/up the swannee
These days, it is an adjective mostly used to describe a genre of action-adventure films involving period costume and sword fighting. The films of Dou...
SWAT is an acronym for Special Weapons and Tactics. SWAT teams are elite paramilitary units employed by US law enforcement departments. The first SWAT...