A - Z Database
This can be a verb, meaning to inform or to tell tales, or it can be the person that does so. It dates in this sense from the late 18th century and de...
British slang for a kiss or kissing session dates from the late 1930s and is possibly a variant of snug in the sense of snuggling up.
Originally, means the loud exhaling of breath through the nose of a man or animal and dates from mid-14th century. Later, during the 17th century, it...
Royal Navy slang for a midshipman. Dates from the late 19th century, and is thought to derive from the buttons worn on the sleeves of midshipmens' uni...
British slang for cigarette since the late 19th century, originated amongst prison inmates where the touching of one’s nose was a silent request for a...
American slang for overwhelm or inundate dates from the late 19th century from the sense of literally being snowed under. More recently from the 1940s...
This expression is so old and so often cited that it is difficult to nail down an exact origin. Suffice to say that the Bible, Chaucer, and Shakespear...
see Not a snowball’s chance in hell
see Up to snuff
British informal expression that means to die. It dates from the mid-19th century from the allusion to snuffing out or extinguishing a candle. There i...
see Eat a horse
A timeless cliché if ever there was one. Some sources ascribe the original thought to ancient Roman texts but there would be no surprise if it was eve...
An expression that emphasises quietness to such a degree that one could hear something as light and small as a pin fall to floor. It dates from the ea...
An American expression for a radio or TV series depicting the inter-connected lives of many characters in a sentimental and melodramatic way dates fro...
Means mediocre and dates from the early 1500s. Shakespeare defined it in As You Like It (c. 1598) Act V, Scene I, “‘So so’ is good, very good, very ex...