A - Z Database
When we rack our brains, it means we stretch them mentally and in this sense it is a figurative allusion to the rack, the gruesome medieval torture de...
To rack wine is a technical term for siphoning or draining wine from one container to another, leaving its lees, the sediments of dried yeasts and oth...
This expression has been around since the mid-15th century and its association with the medieval torture device is obvious. See also rack one’s brains...
Electronic system for locating objects, especially aircraft, by means of radio waves. The acronym radar was coined by the US Navy in 1940 from radio d...
Raft here is used as a collective noun as in a raft of measures, proposals, ideas etc. It has no etymological connection with raft as in a floating pl...
As a verb, the original meaning of rag means to tear into pieces or tear into rags, and dates from the late 1400s. Rag as in to tease or annoy dates f...
Rag-and-bone collectors date from the early 19th century and may have been the first recyclers of waste material. Rags and old, torn clothing were sol...
Rag, tag and bobtail means ‘the whole lot’ or a motley collection of people and means much the same thing as Tom, Dick and Harry. It derives from an o...
Colloquial expression for the clothing business dates from the late 19th century. See also rag/rags.
Originally, a disreputable person and dates from the mid-14th century, although the word appears in the medieval poem Piers Plowman in 1393 and descri...
Rags to riches has been a popular genre of storytelling, where people of poor and humble beginnings become wealthy and successful, for centuries. The...
A chiefly American idiom meaning to spoil someone’s plans or celebrations, to shatter illusions or expectations, is first attested from c. 1900 - from...
Raining cats and dogs means very heavy rain but why cats and dogs? We know that its first appearance, in a slightly modified form, is in 1653 in Richa...
see Saving for a rainy day
To Raise Cain means to cause trouble and uproar, an American expression that dates from the early 19th century. ‘Raise’ Cain here is used in the sense...