A-Z Database
Means to compare like with like or to make a valid comparison as opposed to comparing apples with oranges, which would be an invalid comparison. The o...
Means to make an invalid comparison, see compare apples with apples.
A well-known expression by the 14th century has been repeated by many writers since, including, Fortescue, Shakespeare, Donne and Swift.
See come full circle
see In/out the loop
see Confidence trick
This abbreviation of confabulation dates from the late 17th/early 18th century, 1701, according to the OED. A confab or confabulation means a talk or...
Confetti is Italian for sweets or bonbons. These were multi-coloured and thrown at festivals or carnivals. In the 19th century, the British adapted th...
Originally, this was an American idiom in the form of confidence game describing a ruse to gain someone’s confidence in order to swindle them out of m...
Conk is British slang for nose, especially a large one, and is first attested from 1812. The origin is not known, but the OED says it probably derives...
Originally, an Anglo-Irish children's game, which the OED describes as “originally played with snail-shells, now with horse-chestnuts through which a...
The complete expression is a conniption fit sometimes with the intensifier hairy meaning extreme or scary, as in a hairy conniption. It means an agita...
To make sense of this quotation from Shakespeare, the context must be remembered. In Hamlet Act III, Scene I, Hamlet questions existence (“to be or no...
This expression was coined by Lord John Russell (1792-1878) in a speech to the electors of the City of London in 1859, “Among the defects of the bill,...
This phrase means flamboyant, attention-seeking expenditure on luxurious items. It was coined by Thorstein Veblen (1827-1929) the American economist a...