A-Z Database
This expression originated in America during the mid-20th century and is a hyperbole that describes a patently obvious but socially embarrassing or aw...
At the eleventh hour has come to mean the last possible moment and in this sense it effectively means the same thing as the last minute. The eleventh...
"This has become an ubiquitous catchphrase that only began to take off in the early 1980s, some years after the singer's premature death in 1977, aged...
Foolish or witless people are the most noisy and talkative, an old English proverb that dates from the 1400s where the vessel concerned is a drinking...
see At the end of one’s rope/tether
see Egg on one’s face
The expression 'ends of the Earth' is mentioned in the Bible, Zachariah 9:10, which indicates the expression is very old, probably much older than Wil...
An ancient proverb which suggests that two opposing parties can or should work together against a common enemy. The earliest known expression of the c...
The literal translation of the French phrase is terrible child but since the mid-19th century it has been used in a figurative sense for an outspoken,...
The name was acquired from the Germanic tribe, the Angles, first mentioned in Tacitus (c. AD 100) as Anglii. They invaded Roman Britain in 477 and gav...
Horatio Nelson’s famous flag signal before the Battle of Trafalgar 21 October 1805 was, “England expects every man to do his duty.” It is said that Ne...
This is not so much a proverb as a basic principle of English common law and is attributed to the English jurist Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634). “For a m...
This old English proverb first appears in Heywood’s Proverbs (1546).
see Swing a cat
see Make a cat laugh