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Below is an alphabetical list of widely used and repeated proverbial phrases. If known, their origins are noted. A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition.
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
An idiom dictionary may be a traditional book or expressed in another medium such as a database within software for machine translation.Examples of the genre include Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which explains traditional allusions and proverbs, and Fowler's Modern English Usage, which was conceived as an idiom dictionary following the completion of the Concise Oxford English ...
"When Hell freezes over" [2] and "A cold day in Hell" [3] are based on the understanding that Hell is eternally an extremely hot place. The "Twelfth of Never" will never come to pass. [4] A song of the same name was written by Johnny Mathis in 1956. "On Tibb's Eve" refers to the saint's day of a saint who never existed. [5] "When two Sundays ...
cold – from "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". According to a popular folk etymology, this phrase derives from cannonballs stowed on a brass triangle named after a "powder monkey" (a boy who runs gunpowder to the ship's guns) spilling owing to the frame's contraction in cold weather. (This is however incorrect for several ...
When people sick with a common cold or COVID-19 cough or sneeze, they let out respiratory droplets containing the virus, said Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular biology and immunology at ...
Dead ringer (idiom) Death and taxes (idiom) The devil is in the details; Devil's advocate; Die with your boots on; The Dog in the Manger; Don't judge a book by its cover; Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater; Down the rabbit hole; Down Under; Duck test
When fictional television anchor Howard Beale leaned out of the window, chanting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" in the 1976 movie 'Network,' he struck a chord with ...