A - Z Database
To draw a line in the sand means to set a boundary or limit, beyond which, one will not go and is first attested from the 1950s. There have been some...
To draw a line under something is to close something off or end something. To draw a line between things is to separate and distinguish between them....
see Paint/draw a picture
To gain an initial advantage over an opponent; used in this figurative sense since the 17th century, with the obvious literal allusion to drawing firs...
This is a very old expression from the 15th century meaning to assume a defensive posture. The horns referred to are not those of a bull or stag becau...
see Draw a line under or between something
see Short straw
To the nines is first attested in 1793 in a poem by Robert Burns where it means to perfection. There is a hint of this meaning in dressed to the nines...
A term in association football, to move the ball forwards or sideways with the feet in a series of short pushes dates from the late 19th century, from...
Drift as in to get someone’s drift dates from the early 16th century. Drift here means current or flow and is used figuratively to mean the conscious...
RAF slang for the sea dates from c. 1920.
Has the social ritual of toasting one another with drinks anything to do with the toasted bread that we sometimes eat? The answer is most certainly ye...
Means to out-drink someone, as if in a drinking contest, from the allusion to the loser sliding, drunk under the table at the end of the drinking bout...
Public school slang from the early 20th century for a weak, ineffectual person has etymological connections to wet that means the same thing.
see Into a corner