A-Z Database
Contrary to popular myth, chop suey is not a Chinese-style dish invented in America although it was introduced into America by Chinese immigrant worke...
To do something chop-chop is to do it smartly, briskly, with alacrity. Its origin is early 19th century from Cantonese Pidgin English chop, meaning qu...
Trivial, insignificant, derives from American Jewish informal from the mid-20th century as in, “do I look like chopped liver to you?” Chopped chicken...
British slang for penis, a metaphor for an aggressive weapon, which the penis can sometimes be one supposes, dates from the 1940s. Chopper is also inf...
A portmanteau word coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass (1872), a combination of chuckle and snort.
Chow is both a verb and a noun and is slang for to eat or food of any kind. It dates from the mid-19th century, and was probably first used by sailors...
Australian slang for vomit dates from the late 19th century, sometimes inverted to ‘up chuck’.
British informal meaning pleased, delighted or satisfied dates from the mid-20th century, derives from Northern dialect meaning plump and therefore sa...
This familiar colloquialism for a friend has an interesting origin. Its first citation is from the late 17th century and was originally used by Oxford...
To throw up, Australian slang dates from the 1920s. There are two theories about its origin. The first is that it is an abbreviation of the naval expr...
A cinch is now informal for something that is very easy to do, or a dead certainty. The word is originally of American origin from the mid-19th centur...
Pronounced sink as in kitchen sink and not the French cinque, which of course means five. The historic confederation of the original five ports was se...
Mostly used in a disparaging sense by small-town, rural people to describe a worldly, untrustworthy, nattily dressed urban dweller. It is an Americani...
This expression was coined by Shakespeare in Henry VI Part I, Act II, and Scene V. “Choked with ambition of the meaner sort.”
see Drop a clanger