A - Z Database
As new, or like new, first cited from the early 20th century from the allusion to a newly minted coin. A postage stamp in mint condition means unused...
In US law the Miranda rights are the legal requirements of reading the rights to a suspect before arrest and custody. They start with ‘you have the ri...
A hodge-podge, a medley or jumble, dates from the mid-1400s, a reduplication of mash, which is an even older word for a mixture and, more latterly fro...
This expression is usually used in the negative i.e. a person who never misses a trick is someone who is never fooled by trickery. The expression date...
A miss is as good as a mile means that a miss, whether a narrow one or one a mile away, amounts to the same thing i.e. a miss is a miss no matter by h...
To miss the boat is to miss an opportunity, miss the point or meaning or to be late for something and dates from the early 20th century when sea trave...
When used figuratively it means to miss an opportunity and it took on this figurative meaning in the first decade of the 20th century. Neville Chamber...
All the evidence points to British slang for an air raid siren and then army slang for the German Nebelwerfer Mortar, both from WWII. (It was never, a...
Mob is of course a common English word for an unruly crowd or rabble, the word dating from the 17th century. In the sense of organised crime or the ma...
To put the mockers on someone or something is to bring them bad luck and induce failure. It appears to have originated in Australia during the early 2...
An ancient proverb that was known to both the Greeks and Romans and probably to other ancient civilisations before them. The earliest known citation i...
British informal for cat, first attested from c. 1911, of unknown origin.
To make or turn molehills into mountains means to exaggerate minor or trifling difficulties and the metaphor dates from the 16th century.
To treat or spoil a person with excessive gentleness and care dates from the early 19th century. The coddle part is easy to understand and means to bo...
The first appearance of this phrase in English is Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (1932) where it describes the critical moment at the end of a bul...