A-Z Database
Charwoman is a British term for a domestic servant, a woman hired by the day who does house cleaning and odd jobs around the house. The term dates fro...
see Chit-chat
Today, this word seems to be reserved for male chauvinists, men who denigrate or doubt the abilities of women from a sexist point of view. In its wide...
A term for low class youth is British slang from the early 21st century. The word is thought to derive from Romany chavi meaning child. The Sunday Tel...
This word for a miserly, contemptible person is of American origin from the late 19th century. The word skate in America during the 19th century meant...
Now often means to block or foil but originally refers to the winning move in a game of chess, which goes back in English to The Middle Ages but is mu...
Meaning crowded together, literally cheek by jaw, jowl being on old word for jaw. The expression dates from the 16th century.
From the early 19th century, the cheese was slang for the best, the fashion or the correct thing and some sources ascribe this to the Hindu or Urdu wo...
British military slang for fed up or annoyed dates from mid-20th century. The origin is obscure but probably related to hard cheese meaning hard or ba...
Unpleasant, outdated, insincere, British slang used in a number of derogatory contexts since the mid-19th century, deriving from the offensive smell o...
We often talk about a person as having had a chequered career or past and this figurative usage dates from the mid-1600s and means full of alternation...
Cherchez la femme is French for look for the woman and is a cynical imperative to look for the presence of a woman in any intrigue or scandal. It was...
British informal for a young, virginal girl and also can refer to virginity itself, deriving from the supposed similarity of the fruit to the hymen. I...
Cherry picker is originally a British nautical expression, dating from the late 19th/early 20th century for an inferior seaman who would pick or choos...
see Grin like a Cheshire cat