| A bakers dozen | Thirteen. In the Middle Ages in England there were severe penalties for anyone who gave short weight. Bakers were often uneducated and unable to count. To guard against miscounting twelve as eleven they habitually gave thirteen loaves when selling a dozen |
| A Coward Dies a Hundred Deaths | Cowards die many times before their deaths. |
| A Fools Paradise | Someone who stupidly thinks everything is ok |
| A la carte | On the menu, with each dish priced. From the french meaning - 'according to the menu'. |
| A little knowledge is a dangerous thing | A small amount of knowledge can cause people to think they are more expert than they are and consequently make unwise choices. |
| A Man Who is his Own Lawyer has a Fool for a Client | You can't be objective about your own concerns |
| A1 | The highest quality. Lloyds Register of Shipping used an alphanumeric code for classifying ships for insurance purposes. A1 denoted the highest quality vessels. |
| About Face | Change direction. Originally a military command in the US. |
| About Turn | Change direction. Originally a military command in the UK. |
| Above board | Without any trickery. Originated in the gaming community. If card players keep their hands above the table (board) they can be seen to be playing fairly. |
| Ace in the Hole | Something that can supply a sure victory when revealed. From poker, where a card dealt face down and kept hidden is a called a hole card. The most propitious card being the ace. |
| Acid Test | A sure test, giving an incontestable result. From Gold Rush days in the USA. Gold doesn't react to most acids as other metals do, but does react to nitric acid. To confirm that a find was gold they used this acid in 'the acid test'. |
| Against the Grain | Against the natural order of things. The planing of wood in the wrong direction causes the grain to tear rather than lie smoothly. |
| Al fresco | In the open air - from the Italian meaning ‘In the Fresh’. |
| Arse about face | Meaning that you’ve got it the wrong way round. Australian Slang. |
| As bald as a coot | Completely bald. Coots are water birds whose white head colouring give them the appearance of baldness. |
| As fit as a fiddle | Originally 'as fit as a fiddler'. The allusion is to street fiddlers who gave energetic performances. |
| As luck would have it | From Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. |
| As mad as a hatter | Completely mad. Hatters used to use mercury in the making of hats. This affected their nervous systems and, because of the tremors they experienced, they were labelled as mad. |
| As mad as a March hare | Completely mad. Hares behave excitedly in March, which is their rutting season. |
| As pleased as punch | Very pleased. From the Punch and Judy slapstick puppet character. |
| Back seat driver | Someone who criticises from the sidelines. From the habit of some people of giving unwanted advice to car drivers. |
| Badgered (to death) | Persecuted. From badger baiting. |
| Ball is in your court | The next move is up to you. From tennis, where you must play the ball back to the opponent's court whenever it comes into yours. |
| Baptism of fire | An ordeal or martyrdom. Often applied to a soldier's first experience of battle. |
| Barking up the wrong tree | Following a false scent. Dogs bark at the bottom of trees where they think their quarry is hiding. |
| Basket case | An infirm or feeble person, unable to fend for themselves. Originally a soldier who had lost his arms and legs and had to be conveyed in a wicker wheelchair. |
| Batten down the hatches | Nautical origin - probably 18th century. A batten is a strip of wood; these were used to hold down sheets of canvas to cover hatchways in storms. |
| Beat Around the Bush | This refers to beating bushes in order to scare out game birds to be shot |
| Bees knees | Excellent - the highest quality. Bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. The allusion is to the concentrated goodness to be found around the bee's knee. |
| Belt and braces | Careful - not taking any chances. Using both belt and braces is a double insurance against having your trousers fall down. |
| Between a rock and a hard place | In difficulty, with two unsatisfactory options available. |
| Big wig | An important person. From the British judiciary, who wear wigs in court. |
| Bite the bullet | In the days before effective anaesthetics soldiers were given bullets to bite on to help them endure the pain of surgery. |
| Bright eyed and bushy tailed | Cheerful and outgoing. The bushy tail is a reference to animals like cats that fluff up their tails when excited. |
| Bury the hatchet | To settle your differences with an adversary. Originated with the American Indian tradition of burying the hatchets of the chiefs of tribes when they came to a peace agreement. |
| Chip on your shoulder | From the nineteenth century US practise of spoiling for a fight by carrying a chip of wood on one's shoulder, daring others to knock it off. |
| Close but no cigar | Come disappointingly close to success. Early slot machines gave out cigars as prizes. |
| Cold shoulder | Be treated in an offhand unfriendly way. Visitors who you welcomed were given a cooked meal; those you didn't were given cold shoulder (of meat). |
| Cold turkey | The state addicts are in when withdrawing from drug addition, especially heroin. In the state of drug withdrawal the addicts blood is directed to the internal organs leaving the skin white and with goose bumps. |
| Crocodile tears | Fake tears. Crocodiles sometimes secrete a fluid from their eyes when they kill prey. |
| Dark horse | Someone who shows a previously unknown accomplishment. Horses that regularly won races were darkened to conceal their identity and increase the betting odds. |
| Dead ringer | An exact duplicate. A ringer is a horse substituted for another to defraud the bookies. Dead here means exact rather than lifeless. |
| Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth | Don't be ungrateful when given something. You can tell a horse's age by counting its teeth. Checking whether a present of a horse was old would be considered impolite. |
| Double Dutch | This saying was used in England when they were at war with the Dutch, the implication being that all Dutch spoke nothing but gibberish. |
| Dropping like flies | Falling down ill or dead rapidly and in large numbers. From the Brothers Grimm's story 'The Brave Little Tailor', where a child kills several flies with one blow of his belt. |
| Dutch Courage | This saying was used in England when they were at war with the Dutch, the implication being that all Dutch were brave drunks. |
| Field day | A special or enjoyable time. Fairs and circuses usually set-up in fields. |
| Flash in the pan | Something which disappoints by being over too quickly. Muskets used to have small pans to hold the gunpowder fuse. If that flared up without firing the gun that would be a 'flash in the pan'. |
| Fly by the seat of your pants | Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or theory. Aircraft initially had few navigation aids and flying was accomplished by means of the pilot's judgement. |
| Forbidden fruit | A prohibited article. From the Garden of Eden bible story. |
| Frog in the throat | From the Old English 'frogga', meaning hoarseness. |
| Fruits of your loins | Your children |
| Generation X | The generation of people born in the 1960s and early 70s. |
| Get Out of Bed on the Wrong Side | This saying is an old superstition that says that it's bad luck to put the left foot down when getting out of bed. |
| Get the sack | To be dismissed from a job. From the days when tradesmen owned their tools and, when dismissed from their job, took them with them in a bag or sack. |
| Go off half cock | Act hastily. Flintlock rifles can be fired from full cock or half cock but only work well from full cock. |
| Go out on a limb | Take a risk to support someone or something. From the danger involved in going out onto the limb of a tree. |
| Gone dolally | Gone crazy, insane. British Army slang, from the Deolali sanatorium, India. |
| Gung ho | Eager in an undisciplined way. From the Chinese kung and ho meaning 'work together'. |
| Hit the hay | Go to bed. Mattresses used to be stuffed with straw or hay. |
| Hooray Henry | A loud mouthed upper class fool. Mostly used in Britain. Originates from a character in Damon Runyon's Tight Shoes story. |
| Hot off the Press | Newsprint presses generate heat when printing. The process is known as 'hot metal' printing. |
| Houston we have a Problem | Originally a genuine reporting of a life-threatening fault. Now used humorously to report any kind of problem. John Swigert, Jr. and James Lovell who, with Fred Haise Jr., made up the crew of the US's Apollo 13 moon flight used (almost) this phrase to rep |
| How now brown cow | Used to be used in elocution teaching to demonstrate rounded vowel sounds. |
| How the Mighty have Fallen | From the Bible. |
| Hung, drawn and quartered | A gruesome form of torture and, eventually, death by execution. In use at least until Tudor times in the UK. The victim is first hung by the neck but taken from the scaffold while still alive. The entrails and genitals are then removed and the torso hacke |
| Hush Puppies | These are a well-known type of suede shoes. |
| I'll Swing for you! | This saying comes from the phrase 'I'll Hang for you'. It means that you'd hurt or kill someone because of something they had done, and then swing or hang for it in the gallows. |
| In a quandry | Not knowing what to choose. From Gravity's Rainbow. |
| In someone’s bad books | To be in disgrace or out of favour. Originally black books, which is where a list of people of disrepute were kept. |
| In stitches | Laughing uproariously. From Shakespeare's Twelth Night. |
| In the bag | Secured. Originated in the UK parliament where a bag was placed under the Speaker's chair. Any petition that was put 'in the bag' had to be raised that same day. |
| In the buff | Naked. Apparently originates from the buff coloured shorts soldiers stripped down to for medical parades. |
| In the cart | In trouble. From the practise of taking prisoners to the execution in carts. |
| In the club | Pregnant. More fully 'In the pudding club'. Pudding = semen. |
| In the limelight | At the centre of attention. Stages used to be lit by a process which involved heating lime until it became incandescent. |
| In the offing | Something likely to happen soon. The offing is the part of the sea that is visible from land, i.e. the 'off land'. Ships coming 'into the offing' were about to land. |
| In the red | In debt. In financial balance sheets the credits are written in black and the debits in red. |
| In your face | In a bold aggressive manner. Originated in the US in the 1970s in sports journalism. |
| It came like a bolt from the blue | A surprise. Like a lightening bolt from a clear sky. |
| Join the band wagon | From the USA where political parades were often accompanied by a band on a wagon. Political leaders often joined them in the hope of gaining popular support. |
| Just deserts | The receipt of a fair punishment for ills you have created. |
| Keep schtum | Say nothing. A Yiddish expression, from German stumm meaning silent |
| Keep your nose to the grindstone | Concentrate on working hard. In Victorian England, there were many knife grinder's workshops. Workers lay flat on their fronts and held the blades against grindstones. |
| Keep your pecker up | Remain cheerful. This is the English pecker, i.e. mouth, as opposed to the American, i.e. penis. |
| Keep your powder dry | Be prepared. The allusion is to gunpowder which soldiers had to keep dry in order to be ready to fight when required. |
| Kick the bucket | Die. The wooden frame that slaughtered animals were hung from is known as a bucket. The death spasms of the animals caused them to kick the bucket. |
| Know the ropes | To understand how an organisation works. Nautical origin, where sailors had to learn which rope raised which sail. |
| La dolce vita | The good life, full of pleasure and indulgence. From the Italian; literally 'the sweet life'. |
| Laid out in lavender | Show something in the best possible light. From the practice of strewing lavender or other strong smelling herbs near dead bodies to mask their smell. |
| Lark about | Playing the fool. The word lark means prank or jest. |
| Last but not least | An introduction indicating that the person announced last is not less important then those introduced earlier. |
| Learn the ropes | Learn something new. A nautical term, from the days of sailing ships when new recruits had to learn which rope hauled up which sail. |
| Left in the lurch | Left in a difficult position without help. Originated with the French game of lourche or lurch, played in the 16th century. Players suffered a lurch if they were left in a hopeless position from which they couldn't win the game. The card game of cribbage, |
| Let the cat out of the bag | To disclose a secret. A favourite country trick used to be to substitute a cat for a pig at markets. If you let the cat out of the bag you disclosed the trick - and avoided buying a pig in a poke (bag). |
| Let your hair down | Behave in a free or uninhibited manner. From the days when women normally wore their hair pinned up. |
| Lie low | Keep out of sight. From Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. |
| Like a headless chicken | In a frenzied manner. Poultry twitch and sometimes run around after decapitation. |
| Living on borrowed time | Living after the time you would have expected to have died. The time is 'borrowed' from Death. |
| Make a beeline for ... | Go directly toward something. When a bee finds nectar it returns to the hive and displays to the other bees the direction of the find. The other bees then 'make a beeline' for it. |
| Make a Virtue of Necessity | From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. |
| Make Ends Meet | To balance one's income and expenditures. Ends referring to the beginning and ending of the year. In the 18th century income was irregular, especially for farmers, causing uncertainty as to whether they could make ends meet. |
| Make Haste | From Shakespeare's King John. |
| Make him an offer he can't refuse | From "The Godfather". |
| Make no bones about | To state a fact in a way which allows no doubt. The bones referred to are dice (originally made from bone). |
| Make your hair stand on end. | Frightening. From Shakespeare's Hamlet. |
| Many happy returns | Have many more happy days. Generally used as a birthday greeting, to offer the hope that the happy day will occur many more times. |
| Menage a trois | A living arrangement comprising three people in a sexual relationship. |
| Middle of the road | Something bland or inoffensive; opting to go neither one way or the other. |
| Milk of human kindness | From Shakespeare's Macbeth. |
| Mind your p's and q's | Be on your best behaviour and be careful of your language. |
| Moaning minnie | A habitual grumbler. The term was first used in another context - to describe the German World War One mortars, which made a moaning noise in flight. |
| Molotov cocktail | A homemade petrol bomb, usually thrown. Named after Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister - 1939. |
| More fool you | From Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. |
| Mouth watering | Delicious, tasty enough to make you salivate. |
| Move the goalposts | Changing the target of a process or competition to by one side in order to gain advantage. |
| Mum’s the word | Keep quiet - say nothing. Not mother but 'mmmmm', the humming sound made with a closed mouth |
| Named and shamed | Self explanatory. Coined in the 1980s by UK newspapers when exposing wrongdoers. |
| Neither a borrower nor a lender be | From Shakespeare's Hamlet. |
| Neither here nor there | From Shakespeare's Othello. |
| Never knowingly undersold | Slogan of the John Lewis partnership from the 1920s. Coined by John Lewis. |
| Nip it in the Bud | To cut off the very commencement of growth |
| No more cakes and ale | From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Cakes and ale are synonymous with the good life, like 'beer and skittles'. |
| No rest for the wicked | From the Bible, Isaiah 57:21. ...no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. |
| No room to swing a cat | A small space. |
| Not playing with a full deck | Stupid. Lacking the required intelligence, as a card game being played with a card missing. |
| Not tonight Josephine | Supposed response by Napoleon Bonaparte when refusing sex with Empress Josephine. |
| Not worth a tinker's dam | Worthless. Dams are the small amounts of solder used to repair pewter ware. |
| Nothing is certain but death and taxes | 'In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.', Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 1789 |
| O ye, of little faith | From The Bible, Matthew 8,25. |
| Off with his head | From Shakespeare's Richard III. |
| On a wing and a prayer | Relying on good fortune. From the military. Aircraft that were sometimes returned to base in a badly damaged state with little but the prayers of the crew to keep them aloft |
| On the dole | Unemployed. In the UK unemployment benefit is called 'the dole'. Probably comes from 'doling out' meaning handing out. |
| On the fiddle | Engaged in corruption. In the Navy, or perhaps any ship in years gone by, sailors received their meals on a square plate with a raised edge called the fiddle. I they were to overfill their plate they were said to be 'On the fiddle'. |
| Once in a blue room | A very rare event. A blue moon was originally cited as something impossible and later came to mean unlikely. There are rare examples of the moon actually appearing blue, after volcanic eruptions or unusual weather conditions. Another possible derivation i |
| Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more | From Shakespeare's Henry V. |
| One for the road | A final drink taken just before leaving on a journey. Thought to originate from the practice of offering condemned felons a final drink at pubs on the way to the Tyburn Tree, which was the place of public execution in London. |
| Out of sorts | Unwell. Originated in the printing trade. Letterpress characters were kept in wooden boxes, one box per character and size. When characters were found in the wrong box they were 'out of sorts'. |
| Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings | From the Bible |
| Pardon My French! | This was a saying used in England when they were at war with France. It was thought that the French language was a nasty language, and therefore rude English words must also be French. |
| Son of a Gun | After sailors had crossed the Atlantic to the West Indies, they would take the native women on board the ship and have their way with them in between the cannons. Some of these women would have boys, who were called sons between the guns. |
| The Die is Cast | Julius Caesar uttered this when making the decision to cross the Rubicon in 49 B.C. Used when a bold and irretrievable decision has been made. |
| Turn the Tables | A table has two sides - the well finished top and rough underside. People would usually eat on the rough side, but when guests are dining, the table is turned over and the good side is used. |
| Wet Your Whistle | This saying refers to mugs that used to be used in English pubs. These mugs had an in-built whistle which was blown when the customer wanted another beer |