A-Z Database
To have a chip on one’s shoulder means to harbour a grievance or to have an inferiority complex and dates from the mid-19th century. There are two the...
With its well-established usage in English public schools, it comes as a surprise to learn that this word meaning lively and in good spirits is of Ame...
British slang for either a carpenter or a fish and chip shop and dates in both senses from the late 19th century. Carpenters aboard ships have been ca...
If someone has lost his or her chips, it means the poor loser has either lost some sort of contest or, more seriously, have passed away. The expressio...
see When the chips are down
Let the chips fall where they may is US informal meaning to allow events to happen without trying to influence them or change the result. In other wor...
An abbreviation of chitty and is Anglo-Indian from the late 18th century, while chitty itself dates from about one hundred years earlier; means a lett...
Chit, chat, chitter, chatter are all words imitative of the sounds that birds make and all these words date from The Middle Ages. All of them soon bec...
see Chit
To chivvy is to harass persistently and dates from the late 18th century. It is merely a variation of chevy, a word meaning a hunt or chase, which der...
British derogatory term for someone who is black/coloured on the outside and white on the inside, implying non-adherence to original racial background...
Chock-a-block means crammed full or crammed tightly together and is originally a nautical expression dating from the early 19th century. It is sometim...
see Chock-a-block
Annoyed, angry, deterred or discouraged in some way this figurative usage dates from the late 1920s and derives from the act of choking or pulling bac...
Back in the 1400s, to chop meant to barter deriving from the Old English ceapian from which we get the word cheap. Thus, the archaic meaning of chop a...