A-Z Database
Captain Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe, used this catchphrase to castigate young Pike, one of his Home Guard retinue, in almost every episode of th...
A British expression that means to try something or other and see what happens, and derives from the allusion to sucking a sweet, candy, or lollipop t...
To suck the hind tit is to get the worst of a situation and is American from the early 20th century, from the allusion to the runt in a litter that al...
To suck up to someone means to ingratiate oneself and is schoolboy slang from the mid-19th century. Some sources maintain its origin is linked to suck...
The original meaning is a young mammal before it is weaned dates from The Middle Ages. As in the figurative sense of someone who is easily deceived, p...
see Suck the hind tit
see Not suffer fools gladly
“Great souls suffer in silence” is from the play Don Carlos by Schiller written in 1787. The OED, however, dates the expression in English from only t...
The actual quotation is “suffer the little children to come unto me” from the New Testament Mark 10:14 from the late medieval sense of suffer meaning...
Shakespeare’s famous metaphor for the downside of life is part of Hamlet’s even more famous soliloquy, to be or not to be from Hamlet (c.1600) Act III...
An older man who spends money on younger women in return for sex/companionship dates from the early 20th century and is American in origin. The allusi...
Sun is over the yard arm is a British expression dating from the late 19th century that means it is time for the first alcoholic drink of the day. The...
see Days of the week
One’s very best clothes, so-called because they were worn to church on a Sunday, dates from the early 1600s.
A Sunday punch is a boxer’s very best punch, usually a knockout blow, and dates from c. 1915 and probably derives from Sunday best in the sense of sav...