A - Z Database
Skinny meaning thin or emaciated dates from the 1600s. Skinny meaning inside information or the real truth, is American and dates from the late 1950s,...
To skinny dip is to swim naked and the expression is first attested from the 1950s. The origin is American from the allusion of stripping down to one’...
British slang from the early 20th century for broke or penniless. It derives from being ‘skinned’ which is also slang and means the same thing but dat...
Originally, a skipper was a captain of a ship, the word being an anglicisation of the Middle Dutch schipper where schip means ship. The word in Englis...
To skive or skive off is British informal to shirk work or malinger and dates from the early 20th century. The origin is unknown although there are so...
Disparaging colloquialism for a lowly female domestic maid or worker dates from the early 20th century, according to the OED it is possibly from slavv...
South African slang for a disreputable person dates from the late 19th/early 20th century from the Afrikaans skuit meaning excrement. See also cheapsk...
This word remains an etymological mystery. It describes dishonest, underhand or wicked behaviour and first appears in this sense in America during the...
Very or excessively high, can be used in different contexts e.g. prices, inflation or literally in term of altitude. Dates from the late 18th/early 19...
Skyrocket is originally rhyming slang for pocket, skyrocket/pocket, dating from the mid-20th century. These days, the expression is very popular in th...
The sky is the limit means of course that there is no apparent limit. The expression is American from the late 19th/early 20th century.
British slang to denigrate or rubbish a person dates from the 1970s and probably derives from slag meaning a disreputable person, which is dialectical...
A slam-dunk, first cited from the 1970s, is the forceful slamming of a basketball down into the net, an American sporting expression that has since de...
Vocabulary, expressions, words etc that are generally considered to be below the level of accepted or educated language. The word ‘slang’ dates from t...
British humorous informal for petting and kissing but can mean sexual intercourse depending on the context, first attested from c. 1910 according to P...