A-Z Database
This phrase signifies successful completion of a task and appears to be a British expression from the mid-20th century. Its origin is obscure and is t...
Curiously enough, this expression started life at the beginning of the 20th century as rhyming slang, donkey’s ears/years. By the 1920s, however, it h...
Irish for a drunken brawl and dates the mid-19th century derives from Donnybrook Fair held annually in Dublin County until 1855.
Doolally is British slang from the old colonial days that is still heard from time to time but seldom used in print these days. It means touched, ecce...
Doom and gloom is a rhyming couple that describes feelings of despondency or the forecast of bad tidings, especially in a financial or political conte...
see When one door closes/shuts, another door opens
A cricket term which dates from around 2004. A doosra is a ball bowled by a right-arm spinner that moves from leg to off instead of the normal off-bre...
Originally, American slang for penis dates from the 1960s, perhaps a corruption of dick, but later took on the inoffensive meaning of a dull, stupid p...
A Dorothy is Australian rhyming slang for a six-hit in cricket; Dorothy Dix/six. This usage dates from the late 20th century, although the term ‘Dorot...
Like a dose of salts means very quickly and derives from the speed at which Epsom salts work as a laxative. A British colloquialism that dates from th...
Means that the bad things done to other people are sometimes re-visited upon the original perpetrator. It is similar to the phrase to take one’s own...
British slang for money dates from c. 1944, according to Eric Partridge. The origin is unknown but because of its wartime appearance, Partridge ventur...
To bed down or sleep in rough, common surroundings dates from the late 19th century and may derive from pugilism where to doss a person was to set the...
see Since the year dot and On the dot
This is an American expression from the early 19th century meaning to be meticulous and exact, down the smallest detail and is first recorded as cross...