A - Z Database
Forget all about sailors or pirates swinging aboard ships on ropes with knives or cutlasses in their teeth; this is not the origin, although Hollywood...
The saying, an army marches on its stomach meaning that it cannot function without food (who can?), is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte from the early...
To have been around the block a few times, means that one is experienced in whatever particular context is being referred to, from the allusion of kno...
The complete expression is to go (all) around the houses, a British expression from the mid-19th century and perhaps before, meaning to take a circuit...
Arse was originally an ordinary, everyday word in Anglo-Saxon times for buttocks but which became obsolete in polite usage by the 18th century. In Ame...
British slang to fool about or behave in a silly or foolish manner, dates from the mid-20th century.
British slang expression for something that is back to front or all messed up, dates from the mid-20th century.
British slang for homosexual, dates from the early 20th century.
Absolutely nowhere or a very remote place that is not worth visiting, dates from the 1950s, thought to derive from RAF slang during WWII, from arse-en...
British slang from the mid-20th century to fall head over heels or fall clumsily.
British and North American slang from the early 20th century to fall over spectacularly. James Joyce uses the expression in Ulysses (1922) as does Ste...
see Kiss someone’s arse/ass
This word in its literal sense has been in use since the early 1400s. Its slang figurative use to describe a contemptible person is more modern and da...
see Arse-end of universe or world
British slang for all the time, all day and through the night, dates from the late 19th/early 20th century.