A - Z Database
During the early 19th century, the original bushwhackers in America, and then later in Australia, were pioneers who literally ‘whacked bushes’ to esta...
Euphemism for defecation, coined in Victorian times, during the mid-19th century, to describe the defecation of children and domestic pets like cats a...
American expression for the effective or practical part of something. For example, the business end of a gun would be the end from which the bullet em...
This is a vacation where one engages in activities that are similar to one’s usual work. The expression dates from the early 20th century and derives...
A solecism or corruption of burst as both noun and verb that first makes its appearance in English from around 1830. Charles Dickens uses it in severa...
To bust a gut is a metaphor that means to try very hard at something, from the allusion of straining every ounce of one’s being, including one’s guts....
Chops meaning one’s jaw was Standard English in the early 1500s and then became low informal by the mid-17th century. To bust someone’s chops is Ameri...
Buster is a chap, a bloke or fellow and is pejorative North American slang that dates from the late 19th century. It derives from the now obsolete, bu...
Today’s meaning and usage is usually descriptive of a Lesbian or woman who is overly masculine. This usage is originally American from c.1940 and has...
To take a butcher’s at something is to look at something. It derives from rhyming slang, butcher’s hook/look, from the early 20th century.
Butt, as in to head butt or hit with the head or horns, dates from the 1200s. Butt, as in a barrel or cask, dates from the 1300s. Butt, as in the shor...
To interrupt, intrude or meddle is originally American and dates from the late-19th century from the allusion to a bull or steer using its horns aggre...
An Americanism dates from the early 20th century c. 1906 that is simply the opposite of butt in and is generally used as a retort to someone who has j...
The complete proverb is fine words butter no parsnips which means that words by themselves, no matter how fine, can never complete the task or solve t...
This expression for pure innocence first appears in John Heywood Proverbs (1546) “She looketh as butter would not melt in her mouth.”