A - Z Database
This famous proverb is attributed to Alexander Pope and is a direct quotation from his Essay on Criticism written in 1709. Pope did not coin the words...
see Fear itself
see Pay the price
see Have the wood over or on someone
see Kill with kindness
To the bone means to the very extremity, to affect something or someone in a deep and penetrating way dates from at least the 1400s, from the allusion...
see Dressed to the nines
see Drink/propose a toast
American slang for someone who is ruined, destroyed, in trouble, or even dead, depending on the context. It dates in this sense from the mid-1980s, fr...
A Toby Jug is a porcelain beer mug or jug that has a face on it usually wearing a three-cornered hat. These mugs were popular drinking vessels from th...
To be on one’s tod means to be alone and derives from British rhyming slang, Tod Sloan/alone. It dates from around the turn of the late 19th/early 20t...
A child, typically 12 to 36 months old, dates from the late 18th/early 19th century, deriving from the verb to toddle, which is much older, dating fro...
Toe the line and sometimes toe the mark, mean to conform to set or agreed procedures or standards. If one did not toe the line, one would be said to b...
18th century bare-knuckle pugilists would often engage in toe-to-toe contests in which opponents would literally stand toe to toe and trade blows unti...
Colloquial expression for dead and is an abbreviation of turn one’s toes up which means to die. Both expressions date from the mid-19th century.