A - Z Database
This expression meaning to get to the significant point or to the heart of the matter derives from the world of films where cutting refers to the edit...
Quick in this sense means live tissue or flesh as in the biblical context of the quick and the dead, which means the living and the dead, and comes fr...
To be cut up is to be vexed, sorrowful or very upset and dates from the mid-19th century. This figurative meaning derives from the literal allusion of...
Cute derives from acute, where through aphesis, the first letter of acute has been dropped. Cute meaning the same thing as acute dates from the mid-18...
see Bright as a button
Something or someone that cuts no ice has no credibility, influence, importance or relevance dates from America in the late 19th century before refrig...
Literally of course, someone who is prepared to cut a throat, a murderous villain, dates from the 1500s. Its figurative usage as in employing ruthless...
The very latest, most up-to-date, the phrase dates from the early 1980s. See also leading edge.
A dab hand is an expert and the expression has been known and used in this sense since the 17th century. Although the date of origin is well attested,...
This rather quaint British expression describing someone as mad or silly has a gentle, almost affectionate connotation. Its origin is obscure. Brewer’...
To be at daggers drawn is to be in a state of open hostility. Daggers or knives were routinely carried as protection from very early times. Therefore,...
Rhyming slang for boots, daisy roots/boots, dates from the mid-19th century and is still in use.
In the late 18th century, a daisy-cutter was a horse that trotted with steps close to the turf in the sense that its hooves were cutting daisies. Abou...
According to the OED, this expression means to praise so half-heartedly or disingenuously as to imply condemnation. The exact phrase is generally attr...
Compromised, no matter what one does, this was Lorenzo Dow’s definition of Calvinism in Reflections on the Love of God published in 1836.