A-Z Database
Rabbit, as in to prattle or to chatter annoyingly derives from rhyming slang, rabbit and pork/talk, dates from the late 1930s. Rabbit, as a contemptuo...
A rabbit punch is a blow to the back of the neck and is illegal in boxing. It is so-called because it resembles the way gamekeepers kill rabbits, with...
US slang for a woman’s breasts, dates from the 1990s.
To rack wine is a technical term for siphoning or draining wine from one container to another, leaving its lees, the sediments of dried yeasts and oth...
When something goes to rack and ruin it means complete destruction or worthlessness and unlike rack one’s brains, it has nothing to do with rack as in...
The use of rack in this sense comes from the 14th century use of the word meaning a framework, indicating the framework of how the lamb ribs have been...
When we rack our brains, it means we stretch them mentally and in this sense it is a figurative allusion to the rack, the gruesome medieval torture de...
This expression has been around since the mid-15th century and its association with the medieval torture device is obvious. See also rack one’s brains...
Electronic system for locating objects, especially aircraft, by means of radio waves. The acronym radar was coined by the US Navy in 1940 from radio d...
Raft here is used as a collective noun as in a raft of measures, proposals, ideas etc. It has no etymological connection with raft as in a floating pl...
Rag-and-bone collectors date from the early 19th century and may have been the first recyclers of waste material. Rags and old, torn clothing were sol...
Colloquial expression for the clothing business dates from the late 19th century. See also rag/rags.
Rag, tag and bobtail means ‘the whole lot’ or a motley collection of people and means much the same thing as Tom, Dick and Harry. It derives from an o...
As a verb, the original meaning of rag means to tear into pieces or tear into rags, and dates from the late 1400s. Rag as in to tease or annoy dates f...
Originally, a disreputable person and dates from the mid-14th century, although the word appears in the medieval poem Piers Plowman in 1393 and descri...