A-Z Database
see Put a nail in someone’s coffin
see Last/final straw
see Needle in a haystack
see Found wanting
To find one's feet means to get accustomed to a new situation, a new environment, or a new skill or pastime. It derives from the concept of an animal...
Means first rate, splendid or excellent and is first attested in this sense from the late 19th/early 20th century. Before this, from the late 18th cen...
To be in fine fettle means to be in good order or good condition and the expression dates from the 18th century. Fettle as a verb, and now archaic, al...
see Butter no parsnips
This phrase has passed into the language meaning the pinnacle of achievement. In this sense of course it was first used by Winston Churchill in a spee...
US colloquial to inform on someone to the police, dates from the late 19th century.
Involved in everything dates from the 16th century, perhaps an allusion to the old anonymous nursery rhyme Little Jack Horner. Cervantes used the expr...
A stopgap measure dates from the late 19th century and derives from the story of the little Dutch boy who saved his town from flooding by stemming the...
This expression derives from the medical practice of taking someone’s pulse. It has been used in the figurative sense of staying abreast with latest d...
The crossing of fingers to form a crude cross as a symbol of luck or good fortune is very ancient and pre-dates Christianity although it certainly rec...
Generally used figuratively these days to describe any fiery or incendiary speech and this usage dates from the late 18th/early 19th century. The orig...