A-Z Database
A metaphor that means to try something new or start a new project cautiously without over-commitment or too much risk. It dates from about the 1950s,...
British slang from the early 20th century for a man to have sex, derives from rhyming slang Hampton Wick/prick.
Extremely poor with minimal income and assets, an American expression that dates from the 1930s, from the obvious allusion that poor people usually li...
Dirty laundry or linen, sometimes in the form of washing or airing one’s dirty laundry or linen in public, is a metaphor for personal secrets or scand...
see Into thin air
The etymological root of this word is from astrology; dis + aster, from the Latin dis signifying a negative and astrum, a star. Thus, a disaster was o...
This American expression for announcers/broadcasters of radio music is thought to have first appeared in print in Variety magazine in 1941. Other sour...
This comes from Shakespeare Henry IV Part I, Act V, Scene IV, “The better part of valour is discretion.”
Any offering, food etc, of exceptional quality, was coined by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar (1599). It was spoken by Brutus describing how the conspira...
Dixie or Dixieland is an American expression, which means the Southern states of America, particularly those who fought for the Confederacy in the US...
British slang from the mid-19th century meaning to run away or depart hastily, derives from bunk meaning to decamp or camp out i.e. to sleep in a bunk...
see Duck/ducks
British criminal jargon dates from the 1970s to leave an establishment, a restaurant, bar etc without paying.
This is attributed to John Selden (1584-1654) who wrote a treatise on Preaching. “Preachers say, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’”
This is the more colloquial version of the Biblical “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” that appears in Leviticus 19:18 and elsewhere....