A - Z Database

A - Z Database

Index finger

It is called the index finger because it is the finger used in pointing. Its usage in English dates from the 1400s, from the Latin index meaning a sig...

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Indian summer

A spell of unusually warm and hazy weather in late autumn and the expression dates from the late 18th century. If you were thinking Indian sub-contine...

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Inkling

Its current meaning of a hint or a slight intimation dates from the 1500s but for about two hundred years before this, it meant an undertone or a rumo...

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Insult added to injury

see Add insult to injury


Internet

The Internet is an abbreviation of ‘inter-network’, which is simply a network of computers, connected to one another. These days, it is often mistaken...

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Into a corner

see Corner


Into thin air

When something vanishes or disappears into thin air, it means that it merges or melts into the atmosphere. Shakespeare is credited with coining the ph...

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Iota

As in expressions like ‘not worth an iota’ or ‘not one iota of truth’ means worthless or totally untruthful. According to the OED, this usage of iota...

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IOU

Abbreviation for I owe you obviously with the U substituted for you. The abbreviation has been used since the early 17th century. Since 1795, an IOU f...

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IQ

IQ is an abbreviation for intelligence quotient, a system for measuring intelligence. It was invented in 1912 by the German psychologist Wilhelm Louis...

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Iron Curtain

Most famously, this phrase refers to the impenetrable social, cultural and political barrier that Soviet Russia set up between Eastern Europe and the...

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Iron out

To iron out differences, wrinkles etc, is to smooth out difficulties or problems and dates in this figurative sense from the mid-18th century with obv...

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Irons in the fire

An efficient, skilled blacksmith would have the right amount of irons in the fire, irons that he could deal with comfortably. An over-ambitious smith...

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Ironclad

Meaning an armoured warship is first attested from 1852 when warships first resorted to cladding their timbered hulls with sheets of iron. From c.1884...

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Is the Pope a Catholic?

A jocular, rhetorical question that originated in America during the 1960s but which was soon adopted around the English-speaking world. It is usually...

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