A-Z Database
There is a strong feeling that the habit of crossing one’s heart goes a long way back in time and is connected to the old religious practice of making...
Since time immemorial, a violent argument might have ended in real swordplay, but even as a figurative expression where to have words with someone was...
A strange proverb in that one cannot cross a bridge until one comes to it, however, crossing a bridge here is a metaphor for dealing with a problem or...
see Fingers crossed
One is deemed to have crossed the Rubicon when one makes a decision in life that cannot be reversed. When Julius Caesar crossed the river Rubicon in 4...
An ill-tempered person, usually a child, and derives from the 16th century when patch was colloquial for a fool or dunderhead.
Meaning bad-tempered dates from the early 19th century and derives from the word crotchet which dates from the 1400s and is a diminutive of the French...
see As the crow flies
Slang for male genitalia since the 1970s. First recorded in America but is generally widespread throughout the English-speaking world. See also Family...
The wrinkles that form at the corner of the eyes are first mentioned in Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde c. 1385. “Till crowes feet be grown under your ey...
The philosophy of short-term severity as having longer-term benefits, which was classically expressed by Shakespeare in Hamlet Act III, Scene IV, “I m...
American idiom for looking for trouble and likely to find it dates from c. 1945.
Crumpet or a nice bit of crumpet is British slang from the late 19th century for a woman and follows a long tradition of associating women with delect...
An echoic word that derives from the much earlier and now obsolete word craunch, which dates from the early 1600s and means to crush or grind with the...
The most important part or heart of the matter dates from the latter half of the 18th century. Before this, from the early 1700s, a crux meant a puzzl...