A-Z Database
The Bowler hat is so-called after John Bowler, hat manufacturer of Nelson Square, London, during the mid-19th century.
To feel like a box of birds is antipodean slang for feeling chirpy and happy; dates from the 1940s.
So called because this was where tickets were sold for theatre boxes, generally the most expensive type of theatre seats. The term dates from the mid-...
To be in the box seats is to be in a favourable or advantageous position and dates from the late 19th century, from the allusion to theatre boxes as t...
Refers to male-orientated leisure playthings like off-road scrambling bikes, speedboats etc dates from the 1980s and should not to be confused with to...
A boycott is an organised refusal to have relations of any kind with others on account of differences or disagreements in order to get them to abandon...
Depending on the context, this expression is used to explain, censure, or excuse the unruly or improper behaviour of boys. It has been an ancient trui...
Modern rhyming slang for excrement, Brad Pitt/shit; dates from around 2000.
Presumed licence to boast about one’s accomplishments, especially after winning or achieving something, dates from c. 1977.
Drunk, intoxicated, rhyming slang, Brahms and Liszt/pissed, dates from the 1930s.
In America, where the expression originated, it is brain trust. In Britain and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, it is usually brains trust, in...
Originally. a brainstorm was a sudden impulse or mental disorder and this usage dates from the late 19th century. Half a century later, brainstorming...
The forcible indoctrination or persuasion through propaganda and salesmanship, the word is first recorded from c.1950. It is a literal translation of...
This is simply a more emphatic way of saying brand new where the word spanking acts as an intensifier. The first known usage of brand spanking new is...
Brand new' has acquired almost universal usage, where 'brand' is an intensifier for the word 'new'. But If something is new, then what has been added...