A-Z Database
This was the title of a popular British song in 1934 by Fred Hillebrand and this instruction to the chauffeur of a motor car is a parody on the days o...
An indisputable fact or basic truth that usually causes some discomfort, dates from the early 18th century, but makes use of the figurative sense of h...
The meaning is obvious, although why honesty should be associated with something that has only a 24-hour duration and not something longer, is anybody...
Certainly, the idea or concept at the root of this maxim is very ancient, which has prompted some etymologists to give the source as Aesop’s Fables (c...
Forget all the myths about the groom or sometimes the bride and groom drinking honeyed mead for the first month of their marriage to ensure fertility....
To vomit British slang dates from c. 1950 and is of echoic or imitative origin. Possibly by association, it also means to stink.
This American expression usually refers these days to a ragtime style of music, usually played on a piano, hence honky-tonk piano and this meaning dat...
Pejorative black American term for a white person dates from the early 1970s. The origin is unknown but one suggestion is that honking is the noise th...
British colloquial expression that means upon my honour used to affirm that what is being said is true dates, according to the OED, from 1819. It is r...
A fuss or commotion dates from the 1930s thought to derive from Yiddish hu-ha meaning the same thing.
American slang for liquor dates from the late 19th/early 20th century and is an abbreviation of Hoochinoo, an Alaskan tribe of Native Americans who ma...
Abbreviation of hoodlum is from c. 1930. Hood is also a shortened form of neighbourhood, which is African-American slang from the late 1980s.
Sometimes spelt hoody is short for hooded sweatshirt and can mean either the garment or the young, usually male, people who wear them. The word made i...
Originally this was American slang for a young rowdy street ruffian c. 1871 and by 1877 came to mean a young criminal gangster. The origin is unknown...
American alternative version of voodoo dates from the late 19th century but refers specifically to a person or thing that brings bad luck. See also, h...