A-Z Database
The expression "four corners of the Earth" is mentioned in the Bible, in Revelation twice, 7:1 and 20:7, and also in Isaiah 11: 12, and Ezekiel 7:2. T...
see Monkeys wedding
A sexually attractive female is American slang from the late 19th century.
This famous line is from the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind starring Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. Rhett Butler deli...
Means to be at liberty, without obligations, and dates from the late 17th/early 18th century, from the allusion to birds that can fly to wherever they...
To give free rein is to give people their head and let them do as they wish, as one would with a horse. The expression dates from the 1500s and is the...
An uncontrollable descent or decline as in expressions like, “the economy is in free-fall” is thought to derive from the language of early parachuting...
A competition, dispute, or brawl, open to all-comers and usually with no rules. Also a chaotic situation, lacking rules and structure, dates from arou...
A pirate or lawless adventurer who lives off plunder, anglicised during the late 16th century from the Dutch vrijbuiter which means free booty. See al...
One who works at set or hourly rates rather than employed fulltime. It was originally written as two words and was coined by Sir Walter Scott in his n...
see Chinese cut
A passionate sexual kiss with tongues touching or inserted in mouths, the phrase dates from the time of the First World War and reflects the general B...
Slang for condom dates from the mid-19th century because condoms back then were folded like envelopes and were described as French because of the prev...
A hackneyed expression meaning new areas of interest or activity derives from a misquotation from Milton’s Lycidas written in 1638. Milton actually wr...
see Days of the week