A - Z Database
see Know one's onions
To know what's what means to have a good general understanding or knowledge and is first attested from Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers (1837), “She kn...
This is Oscar Wilde’s famous definition of a cynic in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) Act III. The full quotation is, “What is a cynic? A man who knows t...
Meaning to apply oneself studiously and conscientiously to the task at hand and dates in this sense from the early 19th century. It derives from the g...
A metal instrument that protects the knuckles while adding force to a blow struck with a closed fist. It was originally US criminal slang, dating from...
A knuckle sandwich is a US colloquialism for a punch in the mouth from a clenched fist, as one would eat a sandwich. The expression dates from the ear...
Meaning to concede or admit defeat, from the act of kneeling with the knuckles on the ground, whether forced or voluntary, as a sign of surrender, dat...
A knucklehead is a dull, stupid person; an Americanism that dates from the 1930s, from the allusion that stupid people press their knuckles to their f...
To act in an obsequious manner dates in English from the late 18th/early 19th century from the Chinese k’o-t’ou, which means, knock head and is the an...
Kremlin is Russian for fortress and would be the equivalent of castle in English. Since the 1920s, it has become a metonymy for the Russian government...
From the Greek kudos meaning fame, glory or renown, entered the language as British university slang in the late 18th century.
Acronym for laugh out loud used mainly in written, digital communications like text messaging and email. The OED found instances of its usage dating f...
Posh, affected, either in speech or manner, this expression dates from the mid-19th century and is imitative of what it describes. Sometimes appears a...
A fanciful place of dreamy unreality that popular American etymology would have us believe derives from L.A. or Los Angeles with its connotations of H...
Laanie, variously spelt larny, larnie and sometimes lani is South African informal for posh or fancy. It is thought to derive from Afrikaans but other...