A - Z Database
Rhyming slang for head, loaf of bread/head, dates from the late 19th century, but is now almost Standard English in phrases such as use your loaf.
A loan shark person is a person who lends money at exorbitant interest rates and is an American expression first attested from the early 20th century....
To become embroiled in an argument or conflict is of American origin from the early 19th century, after the way bulls, stags and other horned animals...
Means the whole thing or the complete package and dates from the early 19th century with the allusion of course to early firearms, which were generall...
A locum is a physician or clergyman standing in temporarily for another. It is an abbreviation of the Latin locum tenens, which means ‘holding the pla...
To be at loggerheads with someone is to be in dispute or conflict and the expression dates from the late 17th century. Tracing it back, in Shakespeare...
Lolly is an abbreviation of lollipop, a form of boiled sweet usually on a stick, and dates from the mid-19th century. Lollipop is first attested from...
The long and the short of it means the totality or summation of something or other. Shakespeare used the expression in The Merry Wives of Windsor Act...
see Not by a long chalk
Sports jargon for long arms or sometimes long legs. Cricket commentators are fond of using the expression but not before the 21st century. In biomecha...
see Not by a long shot
Loo is a popular British colloquialism that is now Standard English for toilet or lavatory but its origin remains one of the mysteries of the English...
see Gift horse
This admonition to investigate the facts of the matter before taking purposeful action first appears in Proverbs by John Heywood in 1546.
See Daggers/daggers drawn