A-Z Database
This expression can take multiple forms because the word fist is often qualified by an adjective. For example, one can make a good, bad, brave, poor f...
British informal expression that means to tackle a simple task or action with unnecessary, complicated effort and dates from the late 19th century. Fr...
To initiate a romantic and possibly sexual advance towards another person and dates in this context from the 1920s. It is thought to be of American or...
Rod is an old Anglo-Saxon word for a stick or cane from at least the 11th century and this expression means that a problem of one’s own creation will...
Usually expressed in the negative, one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it is an old proverb, popular since the 1500s, and means that one...
see Song and dance
Take opportunities when presented, a very old proverb that alludes to the difficulty of haymaking in wet weather, first listed in John Heywood Proverb...
see Cannot make head or tail of something.
see Heavy going/weather
Used figuratively to annihilate or destroy someone, usually in a contest of some kind, and dates in this sense from the late 17th century. It derives...
see Molehills into mountains
For centuries, bones have been a problem in food, especially fish bones. Thus, from at least the 15th century, and probably before that, bones came to...
To make one's mark is to attain distinction, dates from the mid-19th century.
In this particular format, the phraseology has only been around since the early 19th century whereas the concept of one’s blood boiling as in getting...
Describes the sensation of fear and is most often attributed to Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726), “Something in their countenance made my fles...