A-Z Database
If spoken words roll or trip off the tongue, it means they come easily, and/or are pleasant to say, i.e. the words flow without effort. The origin is...
A Roman holiday has come to mean a situation or occasion where the enjoyment or profit is at the suffering or expense of others. The expression derive...
This is an old proverb that means important projects need time. Its origin is not known but it first appears in English in John Heywood Proverbs (1546...
Rook meaning to cheat or swindle, or a person who does so, dates from the 16th century and derives from the bird, who like the jackdaw, is known for i...
A rookie meaning a raw recruit or novice was originally a British army colloquialism from the late 19th century, possibly deriving from the word recru...
see Swing a cat
This idiom derives from forestry where to remove a tree, root and branch, is to remove it completely. Therefore, to affect any change root and branch...
see On the ropes
Ropy as a word meaning having the form of or suggestive of rope has been around since the late 1400s, but its modern colloquial meaning of poor or inf...
This phrase was coined by the Roman historian Amianus Marcellinus (330-395) in History, book XVI, chapter 17, to point out that beauty can exist or co...
This was coined by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II. The full quotation is, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any othe...
Sometimes used in the expanded version of living or viewing life through rose-tinted spectacles (glasses in the US), this expression for sublime optim...
Rhyming slang for tea, Rosy Lee/tea, dates from the late 19th century but enjoyed new impetus in the 20th century because of Gypsy Rose Lee the famous...
Exclamation meaning rubbish or nonsense dates from the mid-19th century with the obvious allusion to rotting or decaying material i.e. rubbish. Hence...
A rotten or bad apple has long been used as a metaphor for an unsavoury person of questionable character. It derives from an old proverb that one rott...