A-Z Database
see Not give a monkey’s
see Toss
‘Count me in’ or ‘count me out’ are exhortations to include or exclude the speaker from some endeavour or other and are first cited in America from th...
This is an everyday saying taken very much for granted these days, but it was coined in a hymn entitled Count Your Blessings by an American, Johnson O...
Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched is one of the world’s oldest proverbs meaning do not rely on projected outcomes until they materiali...
An indeterminate distance of certainly more than a measured mile, a very long way, derives from the propensity of country people to underestimate dist...
Be prepared, be careful, early 20th century version (probably only because arse/ass has finally been allowed in print) of the very much older watch yo...
That part of a cricket field between deep mid-wicket and long on, date of origin unknown. There are two theories about its origin. The first one is th...
To describe someone as a cowboy, particularly in a business context, has become derogatory and describes reckless, unprofessional attitudes and behavi...
See Until the cows come home
See Coyote ugly
Coyote ugly is an American slang expression where 'coyote' is used as an intensifier to mean 'very ugly', alluding, of course, to the American wild do...
'Crabs in a bucket' is not so much an idiom as a metaphor that describes attitudes or behaviour of the type 'if I can't have it, then nobody can.' The...
This use of crack as in to consume the contents thereof dates from the 1500s. Shakespeare used it in Henry IV Part II, Act V, Scene III, “By the mass,...
This use of crack as in to deliver a joke briskly or with éclat dates from the 1400s.