A-Z Database
A smidgin or smidgen, sometimes abbreviated to smidge, means a small amount of anything, usually food or drink. It derives from Scottish Gaelic smidea...
This is a warning from Shakespeare that a smiling, friendly disposition may disguise villainy and is from Hamlet Act I, Scene V, “one may smile and sm...
Disintegrated into small fragments dates from the late 18th/early 19th century and is thought to be of Irish or Scottish Gaelic origin. -Een is a comm...
Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a showy way of obscuring the true facts of a situation, a strategy of deception and cover-up. The expression is Am...
Means to smoke tobacco incessantly, often used humorously, dates from the mid-20th century.
A smoking gun is an American figure of speech for irrefutable evidence of guilt and dates from around1970. It derives from the obvious allusion that i...
This simile is first attested from the mid-20th century and sometimes appears as soft as a baby’s bottom. It is not known who coined the expression.
Today in America, snake oil means rubbish or nonsense, much the same as poppycock. Back in the 1920s, snake oil referred to fake or sham remedies that...
Snatch has long been slang for an illicit, hasty, sexual encounter or copulation from at least the 17th century. Not long afterwards its meaning was e...
The first citation of this well-worn cliché is American from the time of the US-Mexican War (1846-48) when a US regiment was said to have snatched vic...
This is an American expression from the late 19th century for light, rubber-soled shoes, so-called because they were noiseless and one could sneak up...
As a verb, to sneak means to move or creep along in a furtive, secretive manner and derives from the Old Norse snikja to creep or crawl. Sneak has bee...
see Not to be sneezed at
see Live on the smell/sniff of an oil/oily rag
This can be a verb, meaning to inform or to tell tales, or it can be the person that does so. It dates in this sense from the late 18th century and de...