Table of Contents About the publisher Preface Editor’s Note Browse A-Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Dictionary Thank You More from Farlex 2 The Farlex Idioms and Slang Dictionary The Most Complete Collection of Idioms and Slang in the English Language Explore more books by Farlex at 3 FARLEX INTERNATIONAL FARLEX INTERNATIONAL LIMITED a Farlex Group Company • USA • Ireland farlex.com farlex.ie Copyright © 2017 by Farlex International All rights reserved. Farlex supports copyright. Copyright drives creativity and creates diverse and vibrant culture. Thank you for purchasing an authorized copy of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing or distributing any part of this work without permission. ISBN-10: 1539588874 ISBN-13: 978-1539588870 4 About the publisher Farlex is the publishing team behind TheFreeDictionary.com, the award- winning reference site with 1 billion+ annual visits. The most comprehensive reference resource online, The Free Dictionary is a massive, easily searchable collection of dictionaries and encyclopedias from the most trusted publishers, including McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, HarperCollins, and many more. Since its founding in 2003, TheFreeDictionary.com has grown to include a vast and diverse amount of reference content, including multiple thesaurus sources and specialty dictionaries covering fields such as finance, law, science, medicine, idioms and slang, acronyms, computing, and more, as well as dictionaries in 14 other languages. Farlex dictionary apps powered by The Free Dictionary have been downloaded tens of millions of times across multiple platforms, with top ratings after hundreds of thousands of user reviews. With The Farlex Idioms and Slang Dictionary, Farlex continues its reputation for the most comprehensive, trusted, and easy-to-use reference products in the world. For more books from Farlex, visit our Amazon page. 5 Preface It could be argued that if you don't know idioms, you don't really know English. That's because the exquisitely robust corpus of the English language is full of idioms, slang, phrasal verbs, and all kinds of expressions whose meanings cannot be understood from their individual words alone, or even gleaned from the sum of their parts. In other words, native speakers typically know what an idiom means simply from having heard it used their whole lives. But challenge those native speakers to explain why an idiom means what it means, and you'll likely hear a long pause—or an attempt to define the idiom with (oops!) another idiom. Try this experiment: go a whole day without using any idioms, slang, or phrasal verbs (which include ubiquitous phrases like "pick up" and "put down"), and see how long you can last. After about five minutes, you'll realize why this book contains more than 17,000 unique entries. And if you find it easy to avoid using idioms, you probably need this book most of all: idioms may sometimes be confusing, but they color the English language with unparalleled richness, providing us with nearly unlimited opportunities to say things in highly specific and nuanced ways. Without them, we'd be much less able to express ourselves clearly and succinctly. Of course, idioms should be used with care, precision, and discretion, or else our speech and writing will become littered with clichés and devoid of meaning. Use this dictionary to enrich and hone your vocabulary, to better understand the origins and meanings of the phrases you hear and say every day, and to enjoy the full possibility of English expression. Get to know idioms, and get to know English even better. 6 Editor’s Note This book is written according to the standard styles and spellings used in American English. While major differences between American and British English are usually addressed, some information in the book might not coincide with the styles, tendencies, or preferences of other English-speaking communities. 7 Browse A-Z 0-9 A adv alm ang asc asl ato B bab bap bec beq bil bli blu bos bri bro bru bus C cab cap cas cau che cla coa con cos cre D dab dod dox E F fir fra G ghe gla god gor H haw hig huc I inc itc J K L lab lev loc M map mos N not nou O one ont P pix pum Q qua R roc S sev shy snu ste swe T tan tho toe U ugl V W whe wok X Y Z 8 0-9 0 dark 100 0 dark 30 0-day 1 day wonder 10 Downing Street 10 to the dozen 110 percent 110 proof 12-ounce curls 15 minutes of fame 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 19 to the dozen 2 way street 20 to the dozen 20 winks 23 skidoo 23 Skidoo Street 3-on-the-tree 3 ring circus 3 sheets to the wind 3rd wheel 4-letter word 4-on-the-floor 40 minutes of hell 40 ways from Sunday 40 ways to Sunday 40 winks the 400 4th wall joke 50-50 chance 5th wheel 6 ways to Sunday a 7 day wonder 9 8 ways from Sunday 8 ways to Sunday 800-pound gorilla 8th wonder of the world 9-day wonder 10