A-Z Database
see Kerfuffle
Latin for seize the day from the odes of Horace, c. 23 BC “Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!” The original Latin is carpe diem, quam minimum...
see On the carpet
This was a scornful Southern American term for Northerners (c.1868) that descended on the defeated Confederacy to exploit business opportunities. So-c...
The carrom ball (sometimes spelt carom) is a bowling delivery in cricket, so-called after the Indian table game of Carrom Snooker or Billiards where r...
The metaphorical connection between the flames of a fire or torch and love, have long been established. In Hamlet Act IV, Scene VII, Shakespeare uses...
Take responsibility for a mistake or misdeed.
see Atlas
To put the cart before the horse is to reverse the set order of things and first appears in English in John Heywood’s Proverbs (1546), “Set the cart b...
To have carte blanche means to have full discretionary power and dates in this sense from the mid-18th century, borrowed from the French carte blanche...
This phrase describing a business or a brand with high market share in a stable market and so delivering a regular source of income was coined by mana...
see Pay on the nail/pay cash on the nail
Both spellings caster and castor are acceptable with the OED favouring castor, but why is it called castor sugar? For the simple reason that the sugar...
This expression means daydreaming or wasting time on pipe dreams. The expression was originally French from the 13th century and first appeared in Jea...
As in cool cat or hep cat is American jazz slang that dates from the 1920s.