A - Z Database
This simile is very old dating back to the 1400s meaning devious and elusive, like trying to hold a live, wriggling eel.
This word now means slovenly or careless and acquired this figurative meaning during the early 19th century. Before that, during the late 16th century...
Derogatory term for a young, generally upper class person about town, especially Chelsea in London, dates from the 1970s. Coined by bar room wits and...
Slop meaning to spill dates from the 1500s. Slop meaning semi-liquid food dates from the 1600s. Slops referring to unwanted household waste is more re...
see Off the mark
During the 14th century, small beer meant weak beer and by the mid-1500s, the expression was being used figuratively to describe anything that was inc...
Fry is a rarely used word today that meant small fish or small children and dates in this context from as far back as the 1400s. It was probably a med...
A smarmy individual is a person who behaves in an excessively unctuous, flattering, ingratiating manner and derives from the word smarm, which means t...
This expression which describes an obnoxious know-all, is originally American in origin, and dates from the mid-19th century. The expression was adopt...
British and North American slang for an obnoxious know-all, dates from the early 20th century.
Drunk, American slang dates from the 1960s.
Wonderful or sensational, British expression dates from the early 20th century.
To be suspicious or to suspect something dates from the 16th century. It also appears in Cervantes Don Quixote Part I, book IV, chapter 10, “I begin t...
Polecat is just another name for the North American skunk, an animal that gives off a fetid smell as a defence mechanism. This American expression use...
see Live on the smell/sniff of an oil/oily rag