A-Z Database
This expression is usually expressed in the negative as cannot hold a candle to someone or something. In The Middle Ages, servants or apprentices woul...
Have sovereignty, power or control over something or someone. Sway is a late Middle English word that means the power of rule or command and the OED s...
This means to take charge and manage until relief or more help arrives. Its origin is from the American Civil War (1861-1865) when General Sherman sen...
Injunction to another person to stop what they are doing and await further instructions or developments, derives from the early days of the telephone,...
see Fingers crossed
If an opinion or theory holds water it means that it is valid or passes scrutiny. This expression dates from c.1600 from the obvious allusion to a sou...
Although grooms and riders have been holding or controlling horses for centuries, the figurative meaning of this expression as in to wait and be patie...
To be left holding the bag means to be landed with the responsibility of resolving some unwanted situation or other and dates from the mid-1700s. Befo...
see Fingers crossed
The British equivalent of the American vacation derives from religious holy days Christmas, Easter etc when people were exempt from work. The word had...
Means obnoxiously pious or sanctimonious but only acquired this meaning in the late 19th century. Before this, it was a straightforward quotation from...
Meaning to shout, holler is a late 17th/early 18th century American variation of the 16th century English foxhunting cry of hallo or halloo.
A hollow victory is a victory that is unsatisfying or has some other unexpected or disappointing consequence that takes the edge off the win. The expr...
In the days of the old cut-throat razor during the 18th and 19th centuries, the razors were generally hollow-ground i.e. the steel was ground so that...
Like all exclamations involving the word holy, this one is American and dates from the 1920s; why cow remains obscure at best, despite attempts to ass...