A-Z Database
Fat chance is an American expression in seeming negation of slim chance but through irony and sarcasm means the same thing i.e. little or no chance at...
The fat is in the fire is an ancient expression that is first found in English in John Heywood Proverbs (1546). It obviously derives from the way fat...
see It’s not over till the fat lady sings
Fat lot of good and fat lot of sense etc date from the mid-1500s and are used in an ironic sense to mean the very opposite. See also Fat chance.
This means all the produce and nourishment that the countryside can offer. The origin is the Bible Genesis 43:18, “And I will give you the good of the...
see Sword of Damocles
A stupid person, originally an Americanism that dates from the mid-19th century.
The notion of being more fearful of fear than anything else is frequently encountered in literature. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt used it in his...
This expression means from one extreme to the other. Feast and famine have long been juxtaposed throughout literature but using different words. The B...
A feather in one’s cap signifies a laudatory achievement. The expression has been used in this figurative sense since the 18th century. The wearing of...
First used c.1950s to describe the frenetic feeding habits of sharks once they have smelled blood; by the 1960s, the phrase is being used figuratively...
Whether one feels something in one’s bones or one’s water they both mean the same thing i.e. that one has an intuition about something. The bones vers...
see Blues
see Feel in one’s bones/water
To have feet of clay signifies vulnerability, instability or weakness. The source is the Bible where Daniel interprets a dream for Nebuchadnezzar of B...