A - Z Database
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...
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...
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...
see Add insult to injury
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...
see Corner
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...
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...
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...
IQ is an abbreviation for intelligence quotient, a system for measuring intelligence. It was invented in 1912 by the German psychologist Wilhelm Louis...
Most famously, this phrase refers to the impenetrable social, cultural and political barrier that Soviet Russia set up between Eastern Europe and the...
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...
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...
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...
A jocular, rhetorical question that originated in America during the 1960s but which was soon adopted around the English-speaking world. It is usually...