A-Z Database
To be born into affluence or under lucky auspices. The earliest appearance in print is in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which was completed in 1615 and tran...
The juvenile correctional institutions in the UK were named after the village of Borstal, near Rochester in Kent, where the first institution was open...
A close, intimate friend from the allusion of clasping him or her to one’s breast or bosom and, by implication, close to one’s heart; dates from the l...
The straits that separate the Black Sea from the Sea of Asov, near Istanbul, were named after the Greek for ox ford, from bos or bous meaning ox and p...
British slang from the late 19th century for cross-eyed. Derives from the slightly earlier dialectical use of boss meaning a mistake or a bungle, as i...
see Bodge/bodger
To give someone both barrels is an American informal expression dating from the 1930s meaning to give someone all the verbal criticism that can be sum...
British, originally London, slang for trouble or violence, a classic understatement of London street language which dates from the 1960s and is usuall...
British slang expression that from about the mid-20th century means courage, nerve or guts. It derives from 1920s rhyming slang, bottle and glass/arse...
see Bet your bottom dollar
see Scrape the bottom of the barrel
Originally, from the early 1500s it referred to hell. It is mentioned seven times in this context in the Book of Revelation in the King James Version...
This American expression means died in battle and dates from at least World War II but may well be linked to earlier British expressions from the Firs...
If someone has bought or been sold a pup they have been duped or swindled. The reference is to fraudulent practices in English markets since The Middl...
British colloquialism for a morally reprehensible person, a cad, dates from the late 19th century. It is thought to derive from the notion of a would-...