A-Z Database

A-Z Database

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Not worth one’s salt

see Worth one’s salt


Not worth the candle

Not worth the candle means worthless or unjustifiable because of the trouble or cost involved and dates from the 1600s. The origin is French and it fi...

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Nothing left in the tank

see Leave something in the tank.


Nothing to crow about

see Something to crow about


Nothing to write home about

A colloquialism that means unremarkable, not worth mentioning and has been used in this figurative sense since the early 20th century, from the obviou...

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Nothing ventured, nothing gained

A very old English proverb appears in various forms and dates from the time of Chaucer and probably before. Chaucer wrote in Troilus and Criseyde c.13...

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Nous

Nous means common sense and dates from the late 17th/early 18th century and is a direct borrowing from the Classical Greek nous (vous) meaning mind or...

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November

see Months of the year


Now or never

An old, anonymous Latin proverb nunc aut numqam dates in English from the 1500s, possibly before.


Nudge nudge

see Wink wink


Nuke

US military slang for nuclear weapon first attested in 1959. The verb, to attack with nuclear weapons, is attested from 1962. Nuke meaning to heat or...

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Number is up

When one’s number is up it means doomed to die, British army slang from WWI, with allusion to a soldier’s military number or dog tag.


Nurdle

This word is perhaps best known in Britain as a cricketing term when batsmen will sometimes nurdle the ball around the ground for ones and twos. Batsm...

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Nut case

see Nut/nuts


Nut/Nuts

Since the 1500s, nut has enjoyed a figurative meaning for a problem and gave rise to the later metaphor tough/hard nut to crack. By the mid-18th centu...

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