A - Z Database
see Bet your bottom dollar
see Scrape the bottom of the barrel
Originally, from the early 1500s it referred to hell. It is mentioned seven times in this context in the Book of Revelation in the King James Version...
British slang expression that from about the mid-20th century means courage, nerve or guts. It derives from 1920s rhyming slang, bottle and glass/arse...
If someone has bought or been sold a pup they have been duped or swindled. The reference is to fraudulent practices in English markets since The Middl...
This American expression means died in battle and dates from at least World War II but may well be linked to earlier British expressions from the Firs...
British colloquialism for a morally reprehensible person, a cad, dates from the late 19th century. It is thought to derive from the notion of a would-...
An eponym meaning to expurgate or edit text or speech, removing material considered improper or offensive, with the connotation that the text or speec...
see Life is just a bowl of cherries
To be overwhelmed by surprise and this figurative sense derives from literally causing someone to fall head over heels i.e. causing them to be rolled...
The Bowler hat is so-called after John Bowler, hat manufacturer of Nelson Square, London, during the mid-19th century.
To feel like a box of birds is antipodean slang for feeling chirpy and happy; dates from the 1940s.
So called because this was where tickets were sold for theatre boxes, generally the most expensive type of theatre seats. The term dates from the mid-...
To be in the box seats is to be in a favourable or advantageous position and dates from the late 19th century, from the allusion to theatre boxes as t...
Refers to male-orientated leisure playthings like off-road scrambling bikes, speedboats etc dates from the 1980s and should not to be confused with to...