A-Z Database
British colloquial noun for something uncommonly large or a monstrous lie, dates from the late 18th century.
British colloquial adjective describing something abnormally large dates from the early 1600s. There are many such words all deriving from striking or...
see Get on someone’s wick
In the ironic sense of something wonderful, the origin is American and first cited in This Side of Paradise (1920) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. During the...
see Give a wide berth
Conjures up images of London working class youth, living on the borders of criminality and, indeed, this meaning is first attested for this phrase fro...
Irrelevant or off the subject dates from the 15th century and makes use of one of the many meanings of mark, in this particular instance, a target or...
In both formats, these American expressions refer to the open sea or sky, in the sense of far and indeterminate distances. They derive from the openin...
A widow’s peak is the distinct, V-shaped hairline at the top centre of the forehead. These days it is a unisex term but this was not always the case....
Weeds in this sense is simply a very old word for clothing and derives from the Old English wæd, meaning garment or clothing, and which dates back to...
see Sow wild oats
A wild-goose chase is a figurative expression for an unproductive, pointless or hopeless quest. Its origin dates back to the late 1500s when it descri...
see Like wildfire
Will o’ the wisp is the folkloric name given to the natural phenomenon of marsh gas that sometimes ignites on contact with oxygen. It was known to the...
Originally, children's slang for penis, first recorded in Britain 1905.