A-Z Database
The complete proverb is fine words butter no parsnips which means that words by themselves, no matter how fine, can never complete the task or solve t...
This expression for pure innocence first appears in John Heywood Proverbs (1546) “She looketh as butter would not melt in her mouth.”
Butterfingers or to be butter-fingered is a person who drops things as if having butter on the fingers or hands thus making them slippery, dates from...
This expression describes that fluttery feeling in the pit of one’s stomach that we have all experienced at one time or another when nervous. It dates...
Slang for clitoris from about 1870. Also pugilistic slang for the chin from the early 1900s. See On the button.
To stop talking or keep quiet about something dates from the mid-19th century.
To buttonhole someone is to detain them in conversation against their will and dates from the late 19th century. Before this, it was ‘button-hold’ in...
British slang that dates from the mid-19th century for a page or hotel attendant, from the numerous jacket buttons on tunics or uniforms worn by such.
Originally, Liverpool slang for buttered bread dates from the late 19th century but, in more recent times, spread throughout the North and much of Bri...
see Bought/sold a pup
see For a song
see Bought the farm
Buzz is a busy little word. Buzz meaning a busy rumour dates from the early 1600s but made a revival in America in the 1950s when it took on the meani...
see By/to/within a hair’s breadth/whisker
see Not by a long chalk