C
(chat) see

CCC
(chat, Internet) hugs for people you can't quite reach around

CMIIW
(web, chat) correct me if I'm wrong

CU

• CYA

(e-mail, SMS) see you, see ya

CUL8R

• CU
• L8R
• CYA
• CYAL8R

(web, chat) see ya later; see you later

CW2CU
(chat) can't wait to see you

CWOT

• complete
• waste of time
• complete waste
• time
• waste

(SMS Dictionary etc.) Complete waste of time.
Example:
A friend of us actually has a folder named CWOT where he dumps all the random stuff from the Internet he is always downloading.


CYA
(chat) See ya!

CYAL8R

• CYA
• L8R
• CU
• CUL8R

(web, chat) see ya later; see you later

Calamity Jane

• Calamity
• Jane
• Martha Jane Cannary Burke
• Martha Burke
• Martha Cannary
• Jane Cannary Burke
• Jane Burke
• Jane Cannary
• Cannary
• Burke

1. The Jane who predicts the calamity; a prophet of disaster.
Example:
She's a real calamity Jane. You've only got to catch a bad cold for her to start thinking of coffins.
2. A person whom something always happens to. History:
The name was coined as a nickname for Martha Jane Cannary Burke, an American marksperson. Martha Canary is an American frontier figure. She was born in Princeton, Missouri, about 1848-1856, and died in 1903. Journeying to the gold fields of Montana with her parents in 1864, she and her siblings were often left alone to fend for themselves. By 1869 both parents were dead, and there is evidence that Martha was alone in the small Union Pacific railroad camp of Piedmont, Wyoming, probably working in a boarding house. From there she traveled to railroad towns and military posts making her living any way she could, at times working as a prostitute.
The first historical record of Martha using the name of Calamity Jane is when she accompanied the Jenney-Newton geological expedition into the Black Hills in 1875. Her career as a camp follower continued when she joined General George Crooks expedition against the Lakota in February 1876, and a second Crook-led expedition that same spring.
This hard drinking woman wore men's clothing, used their bawdy language, chewed tobacco and was handy with a gun. At her death, the "White Devil of the Yellowstone" was remembered as a saint by the citizens of Deadwood, where she nursed victims of a smallpox epidemic in 1878. She was something of a local legend because the Sioux Indians left her alone (as well as because of her eccentricities, braveness and kindness). Probably, it was from her that Bret Harte took his famous character of Cherokee Sal in "The Luck of Roaring Camp".
Why "Calamity"? That's what she'd threaten to any man who bothered her - a calamity. Or perhaps it was due to her heroic efforts during the smallpox epidemic. Or maybe it was a description of a very hard and tough life.
According to the "Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane" (By Herself): "After that campaign I returned to Fort Sanders, Wyoming, [and] remained there until spring of 1872, when we were ordered out to the Muscle Shell or Nursey Pursey Indian outbreak. In that war, Generals Custer, Miles, Terry and Crook were all engaged. This campaign lasted until fall of 1873. It was during this campaign that I was christened Calamity Jane. It was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where the town of Sheridan is now located. Capt. Egan was in command of the Post. We were ordered out to quell an uprising of the Indians, and were out for several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded. When on returning to the Post we were ambushed about a mile and a half from our destination. When fired upon Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt. Egan on recovering, laughingly said: "I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains." I have borne that name up to the present time."
3. (World golf) The name that Bobby Jones gave to his putter. Also putters modeled after his hickory-shafted blade putter.


Cat got your tongue

• Cat got one's tongue
• Cat got your tongue?
• Cat
• got
• get
• tongue

Why aren't you talking?; Is there a reason that you're not speaking?
Example:
Why don't you answer me? Cat got your tongue?
Etymology:
The phrase probably comes from a custom in the Mideast hundreds of years ago, when it was common to punish a thief by cutting off their right hand, and a liar by ripping out their tongue. These severed body parts were given to the king's pet cats as their daily food.
On the other hand, probably someone thought up this saying to ask, "Why don't you talk?" in a clever way, and it caught on.
By the mid-1800s this expression was popular in both the United States and Britain. Though no one is absolutely sure where it came from, but you can imagine that if a cat really got hold of your tongue, you wouldn't be able to say a word.

Central European Time

• Central
• European
• Time
• CET

The time used in Central Europe (France, Germany etc.). It is 2 hours late in relation to Moscow.

Certificate of Good Standing

• Certificate of Existence
• Certificate of Authorization
• Certificate
• Good Standing
• Good
• Standing
• Existence
• Authorization

a certificate issued by a state official as conclusive evidence that a corporation is in existence and is authorized to transact business within that state. The certificate generally sets forth the corporation's name and declares that it is duly incorporated or authorized to transact business, that all fees, taxes, and penalties owed to that state have been paid, that its most recent annual report has been filed, and that it has not yet filed articles of Dissolution.
Example:
In addition every applicant must provide a certificate of good standing from each of his or her home law societies, bars, chambers or courts. (Solicitors' information packs)
Synonyms:
Certificate of Existence, Certificate of Authorization


Chickens come home to roost

• Chickens
• come home
• roost
• Chicken
• come
• home

Words or actions come back to haunt a person; evil acts will return to plague
the doer; we cannot escape the consequences of our actions.
Example:
You'd better be careful what you say when you're angry. Chickens come home to roost.
Etymology:
In 1810 the English poet Robert South wrote, "Curses are like young chickens; they always come home to roost." If you live on a farm, you'll know that chickens allowed to run around the barnyard come back to the chicken coop to sleep. In this expression the "chickens" are angry words or thoughtless actions. When they "come home to roost", they come back to cause trouble. In other words, everyone has to deal with the results of his or her own actions.

Cockaigne

• land
• Cockayne
• land of Cockayne

[kah-KAYN]
Also: Cockayne.
An imaginary land of ease and luxury.
Examples:
1) Outside, in the dark, a wobbly patch of life upon the blue snow, the deer perhaps browsed, her soft blob of a nose rapturously sunk in the chilly winter greenery, her modest brain-stem steeped in some dream of a Cockaigne for herbivores. (John Updike, "Toward the End of Time")
2) Everyone was seeking renewal, a golden century, a Cockaigne of the spirit. (Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum")
Etymology:
"Cockaigne" comes from Middle English "cokaygne", from Middle French "(pais de) cocaigne" - "(land of) plenty," ultimately adapted or derived from a word meaning "cake."
Trivia: References to Cockaigne are prominent in medieval European lore. George Ellis, in his "Specimens of Early English Poets" (1790), printed an old French poem called "The Land of Cockaign" (13th century) where "the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing."
Synonym: land of Cockaigne.


Curiosity killed the cat

• Curiosity
• kill
• cat

Be cautious when investigating situations.
Etymology: The saying originally was "care kills a cat," and began in the 16th century. "Care" was a warning that worry was bad for everyones health and could lead to an early grave; the phrase was a recognition that cats seemed to be very cautious and careful. Over time, the word "care" evolved into "curiosity."

c%l
(SMS) cool

c&g
(SMS) chuckle and grin


ca$et
(SMS) casset

cabal
[kuh-BAHL; kuh-BAL]
1. A secret, conspiratorial association of plotters or intriguers whose purpose is usually to bring about an overturn especially in public affairs.
2. The schemes or plots of such an association.
3. To form a cabal; to conspire; to intrigue; to plot.
Examples:
1) If you constantly disagreed with Winters, he wrote you out of his cabal, his conspiracy against the poetry establishment. (Richard Elman, "Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs")
2) My father always had been a collector. There were the stamps, National Geographics, scrapbooks filled with his favorite political cartoons, and booklets justifying his belief that the world was under the control of a global cabal of elites unified by such organizations as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Freemasons. (Frederick Kempe, "Father/Land")
3) But the new world of toys is by no means simply the product of a profit-mad cabal of toy pushers discovering new ways of exploiting the child market. (Gary Cross, "Kids' Stuff")
4) The Anti-Federalists were not simply concerned that Congress was too small relatively - too small to be truly representative of the great diversity of the nation. Congress was also too small absolutely - too small to be immune from cabal and intrigue. (Akhil Reed Amar, "The Bill of Rights")
Etymology:
"Cabal" derives from Medieval Latin "cabala", a transliteration of Hebrew "qabbalah" ("received," hence "traditional, lore"), from "qabal" ("to receive"). The evolution in sense is: "(secret) tradition, secret, secret plots or intrigues, secret meeting, secret meeters, a group of plotters or intriguers."


cabarenaissance
(Brit.) A term attempting to conjure up a fashion of the moment.
Example:
"Johnnie Walker Gold Label" ... decided that the "cabarenaissance" provided the perfect backdrop to launch a new "serving suggestion" intended to attract the younger whisky sipper. (Jonathan Heaf, "Life is a cabaret", The Guardian, Friday July 2, 2004)
Etymology: The word is formed by wedging "cabaret" and "renaissance" together. It refers to a type of dressy night out, one step up in sophistication from clubbing - if it is possible to describe a mixture of cocktails, jazz, dance cards and striptease in that way.



cabbage
[KAB-ij]
1. A type of leafy vegetable.
2. Steal, filch; pilfer, take someone else's things.
Example:
In the late 18th-century play "The Reconciliation", Mrs. Grim confesses that she "now and then cabbaged a penny."
History:
Does the "filching" sense of "cabbage" bring to mind an image of thieves sneaking out of farm fields with armloads of pilfered produce? If so, you're in for a surprise. That "cabbage" has nothing to do with the leafy vegetable. It originally referred to the practice among tailors of pocketing part of the cloth given to them to make garments. The verb was cut from the same cloth as an older British noun "cabbage," which meant "pieces of cloth left in cutting out garments and traditionally kept by tailors as perquisites." Both of those ethically questionable "cabbages" probably derived from "cabas," the Middle French word for "cheating or theft." The "cabbage" found in cole slaw, on the other hand, comes from Middle English "caboche," which means "head."


cabin fever

• cabin
• fever

Boredom and restlessness resulting from being indoors too long.
Examples:
1) After the tenth straight day of snow, I started getting cabin fever. 2) Ned was sick with the flu, and by the end of the week he had a bad case of cabin fever.
Etymology:
A 'cabin' is a small house, and 'fever' is sickness. So if you have 'cabin fever', you are sick of being inside your house.


cachet
[ka-SHAY]
1. A seal used especially as a mark of official approval.
2. A feature or quality conferring prestige; also: prestige.
Example:
Robin's chosen college didn't have the same cachet as an Ivy League school, but it had the best program for her needs.
Etymology:
In the years before the French Revolution, a "lettre de cachet" was a letter, signed by both the French king and another officer, that was used to authorize a person's imprisonment. Documents such as these were usually made official by being marked with a seal pressed into soft wax. This seal was known in French as a "cachet". This word derived from the Middle French verb "cacher," meaning "to press" or "to hide." The "seal" sense of "cachet" has been used in English since the mid-17th century, and in the 19th century it acquired its extended sense, that of a distinguishing mark that is used to identify something as being prestigious.


cachinnate
[KAK-uh-nayt]
to laugh loudly or immoderately
Example:
"He looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his sides must have ached." (John Burroughs, "A Bed of Boughs")
Etymology:
"Cachinnate" has been whooping it up in English since the 19th century. The word derives from the Latin verb "cachinnare", meaning "to laugh loudly," and "cachinnare" was probably coined in imitation of a loud laugh. As such, "cachinnare" is much like the Old English "ceahhetan", the Old High German "kachazzen", and the Greek "kachazein" - all words of imitative origin that essentially meant "to laugh loudly". Our word "cackle" has a different ancestor than any of these words (the Middle English "cakelen"), but this word, too, is believed to have been modeled after the sound of laughter.

cacophony

• cacophonous

[kuh-KAH-fuh-nee]
1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance.
2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.
Examples:
1) New York was then a cacophony of sounds - a dozen accents ricocheting off surrounding buildings as immigrant mothers called their children home for supper, noon whistles blowing, vendors hawking their wares on the streets, children shouting, horses whinnying, and people yelling. (Herbert G. Goldman, "Banjo Eyes")
2) The mammoth central station towered over the platforms, and with the cacophony from whooshing steam, shrill whistles, shouts and the heaving of hand and horse carts, not only was it the biggest, noisiest, most confusing experience any of them had ever encountered, but the city was almost unimaginable. (Christopher Ogden, "Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg")
Etymology:
"Cacophony" comes from Greek "kakophonia", from "kakophonos", from "kakos" ("bad") + "phone" ("sound"). The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.


cadge

• codger
• old codger

1. Donation to a beggar.
2. A circular frame on which cadgers carry hawks for sale.
3. (Proverb or slang) To beg for money; to intrude or live on another meanly; to ask for and get free; be a parasite.
Synonyms: mooch, bum, grub, sponge, beg, nag 4. To obtain or seek to obtain by wheedling.
Synonym: scrounge
5. (Proverb - English and Scotland) To carry, as a burden.
6. (Proverb) To hawk or peddle, as fish, poultry, etc.
Examples:
1) He is always shnorring cigarettes from his friends.
2) He cadged a tenner off me yesterday.
3) See if you can cadge a lift to the pub.
History, related words, more examples:
The word starts its recorded life with men of that name in Northern England and Scotland in the late 15th c. They were itinerant hawkers and peddlers with a horse and cart or a packhorse, who collected butter, eggs, poultry and other farm produce for sale in the local market and who in return took out small items to farms from the local shops. They did not enjoy a high reputation: often hard bargainers and hard swearers ("to curse like a cadger" was once a Scots simile), they were at the bottom of the social order. An old Scots proverb says "the king's errand may come to the cadger's gate yet", meaning that even the highest in the land may sometimes need the help of the most humble. About 1600 we start to see the verb "to cadge", meaning to carry things about, as a cadger does. In the 19th c. the word went even further downhill, when it started to be applied in England to men who pretended to be hawkers or street traders but who were actually beggars or tramps. An early example, of 1860, is in "The Roman Question", by Edmond About: "Pray give something to yonder sham cripple; give to that cadger who pretends to have lost an arm; and be sure you don't forget that blind young man leaning on his father's arm!" A little later, the word shifted to refer to men who "borrowed" small sums from acquaintances and friends but conveniently forgot to return them. R. Austin Freeman (an almost forgotten crime writer, well-known in his day) acutely observed the type in "For The Defence, Dr Thorndyke" of 1934: "Ronald Barton was an inveterate cadger, a confirmed borrower; and, as is the way of the habitual borrower, as soon as the loan had been obtained, the transaction was finished and the incident closed so far as he was concerned." There's another sort of "cadge", in falconry: the padded wooden frame on which hooded hawks are taken out to the field. This is often said to be linked to the other senses but it seems instead to have been an alteration of "cage" under the influence of "cadge" in the sense of carrying things. The man who carried the cadge was also a cadger, but despite comments in falconry books this has nothing to do with the begging sense. There's also "codger", which often turns up these days as "old codger", meaning a man who is mildly eccentric and of mature years. This may well be a variation on "cadger" that comes through the idea of an old beggar or tramp (at one time in English dialect "codger" could refer to a disagreeable or miserly old man) but which has softened somewhat over time. Falconers sometimes like to say this is also connected with cadges, since those who carried them were often old men good for nothing better. Again, this just muddies the etymological waters.

cadre
[KAD-ree; -ray; KAH-dray; -druh]
1. A core or nucleus of trained or otherwise qualified personnel around which an organization is formed.
2. A tightly knit and trained group of dedicated members active in promoting the interests of a revolutionary party.
3. A member of such a group.
4. A group of people with a unifying relationship.
5. A framework upon which a larger entity can be built.
Synonym: scheme.
Examples:
1) Trained cadres flowed across the porous border and down the blossoming supply trail through eastern Laos. (Peter Gay, "Pleasure Wars")
2) Around 1880, the year Flaubert died, the French avant-garde was made up of a cadre of bitter, highly self-conscious poets, painters, novelists, and critics. (Daniel Okrent, "Twilight of the Boomers," Time, June 12, 2000)
3) The prison's existence was known only to those who worked or were imprisoned there and to a handful of high-ranking cadres, known as the Party Center, who reviewed the documents emerging from S-21 and selected the individuals and the military and other units to be purged. (David Chandler, "Voices From S-21)
4) The failure of the League of Nations and the shock of Munich had spurred more support, sometimes from names that were widely known, for a federation of free peoples, a union of sovereign states, or whatever similar arrangement might lower the possibility of conflict. Adherents came from the usual cadre of pious dreamers. (Hugo Young, "This Blessed Plot")
Etymology:
Upon entering the English language around 1830 via Sir Walter Scott's "Introduction to The Lay of the Last Minstrel", this word first meant "framework," and by the 1850s was a term for a group of people. It was borrowed from the French "cadre" ("a picture frame"), from Italian "quadro" ("framework"), from Latin "quadrum" ("square, four-sided thing").
Squares can make good frameworks - a fact that makes it easier to understand why first French speakers and later English speakers used "cadre" as a word meaning "framework." If you think of a core group of officers in a regiment as the framework that holds things together for the unit, you'll understand how the "central unit" sense of "cadre" developed. Military leaders and their troops are well-trained and work together as a unified team, which may explain why "cadre" is now sometimes used more generally to refer to any group of people who have some kind of unifying characteristic, even if they aren't leaders.


caduceus
[kuh-DOO-see-us]
1. A figure of a staff with two snakes wound around it and two wings at the top.
2. An insignia bearing a caduceus and symbolizing a physician.
Example:
Adrienne knew she had found Dr. Moore's office when she saw the familiar caduceus on the door.
Etymology:
Beware of snakes - at least snakes entwining heraldic staffs - because they're not all caducei. The genuine "caduceus" takes its name from Latin, which in turn picked up the name as a modification of Greek "karykeion," from "karyx" or "keryx," meaning "herald." Such a two-snake staff was the symbol of messenger-gods Mercury and Hermes, and it is still used in the insignia of the U.S. Army medical corps. If you see just one snake and no wings, there may be a doctor in the house, but one who displays the staff of Aesculapius, the god of medicine, rather than a true caduceus.


caesura

• caesuras
• caesurae

[sih-ZHUR-uh; -ZUR-]
plural: caesuras or caesurae [sih-ZHUR-ee; -ZUR-ee]
1. A break or pause in a line of verse, a break in the flow of sound, usually occurring in the middle of a line, and indicated in scanning by a double vertical line; for example, "The proper study || of mankind is man" (Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man).
2. Any break, pause, or interruption.
3. A pause marking a rhythmic point of division in a melody.
Examples:
1) After an inconclusive day spent discussing the caesura of "Sonnet"'s opening line, Luke and his colleagues went for cocktails at Strabismus. (Martin Amis, "Heavy Water and Other Stories")
2) The crucial event of the Robedaux family occurs offscreen, in a narrative caesura between the film's two "acts." (Richard Corliss, "The Patter of Little Footes," Time, May 13, 1985)
3) Say her name today in the right circles and you'll notice a sudden intake of breath, a caesura of pure awe. (Michael Dirda, "In which our intrepid columnist visits the Modern Language Association convention and reflects on what he found there," Washington Post, January 28, 2001)
4) During the historical caesura between the total destruction of Aquileia and the seventh-century foundation of the city of Heraclea as the first political capital of the second Venice, the refugees lived on Grado and the other islands, just as Cassiodorus had seen them: humbly, simply, and by the toil of their hands. (Patricia Fortini Brown, "Venice and Antiquity")
5) Without so much as the caesura of a drawn breath I was first shouting in joy, then screaming in shock. (E.L. Doctorow, "World's Fair")
History:
The word "caesura," borrowed from Late Latin, is ultimately from Latin, from the past participle of "caedere" meaning "to cut", "caesura" ("a cutting off, a division, a stop"). Nearly as old as the 450-year-old poetry senses is the general meaning "a break or interruption."
Caesuras (or caesurae) are those slight pauses one makes as one reads verse. While it may seem that their most obvious role is to emphasize the metrical construction of the verse, more often we need these little stops (which may be, but are not necessarily, set off by punctuation) to introduce the cadence and phrasing of natural speech into the metrical scheme.


caitiff
[KAY-tif]
cowardly, despicable
Example:
The caitiff villain yet seemed... to have some sense of his being the object of public detestation, which made him impatient of being in public. (Sir Walter Scott, "The Heart of Midlothian")
Etymology:
The adjective's more common, but "caitiff" also occurs as a noun meaning "a base, cowardly, or despicable person" (as in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure": "O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal!"). Both the adjective and the noun came into English in the 14th century, and both evolved from the Anglo-French adjective "caitif", meaning "wretched, despicable". The French word in turn derived from the Latin "captivus", meaning "captive" - the shift from "captive" to "wretched" perhaps prompted by the perception of captives as wretched and worthy of scorn.


cajole
[kuh-JOAL, -JOHL]
1. To persuade with flattery, repeated appeals, soothing words, or gentle urging, especially in the face of reluctance.
Synonym: coax
Examples:
1) Peter's friends cajoled him into coming to the party even though he was not in the mood to go.
2) If Robert had been an ordinary ten-year-old he would have cajoled and whined, asked and asked and asked until I snapped at him to keep quiet. (Anna Quindlen, "Black and Blue")
3) One of Virgil's great accomplishments was his ability to charm, cajole, weasel people out of their bad moods, especially when their bads moods inconvenienced him. (Anthony Tommasini, "Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle")
4) Whiz kept to himself and spent long hours every day studying financials and technical charts and reading impenetrable economic publications. Even the warden had tried to cajole him into sharing market tips. (Belfry Holdings, "The Brethren")
2. To deceive with soothing words or false promises.
History, related words:
It's likely that words "cajole" and "cage" are connected. Researchers have made an association between the prattle of a caged bird and the persistent wheedling of a person attempting to get something out of someone else. "Cajole" comes from an Early Modern French verb, "cajoler," which now means "coax" but at one time meant "to chatter like a bird in a cage, to sing"; hence, "to amuse with idle talk, to flatter; to chatter like a jay." Some etymologists theorize that "cajoler" is from "gaiole", "jaiole", an Old North French word meaning "(bird)cage". "Gaiole" derives from a Medieval Latin word, "caveola," which means "little cage" and is the diminutive of the Latin "cavea" ("an enclosure, a den for animals, a bird cage"), from "cavus" - "hollow". It is related to "cave", "cage" and "jail" (British "gaol").


calamity leave

• calamity
• leave

emergency leave to deal with family crises.
Example:
Calamity leave: This leave is meant for very special personal circumstances that require immediate action. Its duration varies from a few hours to a few days-as long as is necessary to do what needs to be done. Generally speaking the employer will grant such leave and is obliged to do so to an extent that is fair considering the nature of the problem. In those cases where the employee is entitled to ten-day leave the calamity leave will only last one day and will then be replaced by the ten-day leave. (The Netherlands' Caregiving Legislation)



call


call it a day

• call
• day

to stop work for the day; to bring a project to an end for the time being.
Example:
You've been working on that history report since before breakfast. Why don't you call it
a day?
Etymology:
The idea expressed in this idiom is that a certain amount of work is enough for one day. When you've done that amount, you should "call it a day", meaning to declare that you've done a full day's work and that you're stopping.

call one's bluff

• call your bluff
• call the bluff
• call
• bluff

To demand that someone prove a claim; to challenge someone to carry out a threat; to challenge someone to show that they are not being deceptive and can actually do what they say they can do.
Examples:
1) My girlfriend always said that she didn't want to get married so I called her bluff and asked her to marry me. She said yes.
2) They're bragging they can beat us badly. C'mon. Let's call their bluff.
Etymology:
This early 19th century American saying comes from card playing. In poker, a player makes bets according to what his hand is, compared to what he thinks others' are. When you bluff, you pretend you have a great hand of cards even when you don't, and raise the bet to fake out the other players. One makes an opponent show his or her cards to show that they are weaker than they are pretending them to be. If someone "calls your bluff", he or she challenges you by meeting or raising your bet ("to call" means to match a bet) to make you show the cards you really have.


call smb. on the carpet

• call on the carpet
• walk the carpet
• walk
• call
• carpet

to call a person before an authority for a scolding.
Example:
My piano teacher called me on the carpet today. He could tell I hadn't practiced all
week.
History:
There was an expression in Britain in the early 1800s, "to walk the carpet". That referred to a servant's being called into the parlor (which was always carpeted, unlike the servant's quarters) to be scolded by the master or mistress of the house. Later the saying was applied to an unlucky employee being called to the boss's office (also carpeted) to be bawled out. Today, if anyone in authority scolds you, you are being "called on the carpet" no matter how the floor is actually covered.

call the shots

• call the shot
• call the tune
• call one's shots
• call one's shot
• call
• shots
• shot

1. to make the decisions; to be in charge or control; to determine the policy or procedure; to give orders; exercise authority; run the show.
Example:
1) You may know all about glassblowing, but here in the gym, I call the shots.
2) Who is calling the shots in this house?
Synonym: call the tune
2. to announce exactly what one is going to do.
Example:
In some games played on the pool table, the shooter is required to call his shots,
e.g. "Eight ball in the side pocket".
History:
The origin of this expression is unclear, but it might refer to the officer in charge of soldiers in a battle. He gives the commands and calls the (gun) shots. The phrase also suggests the role of a coach of a basketball team who tells the players what plays to make and what (basketball) shots to take. On the other hand, "calling the shots" might come from the game of billiards or pool, wherein the player announces his shots in advance. Today we say that the person in charge of any kind of activity "calls the shots". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "calling the shots" seems to be a surprisingly recent phrase, having first appeared in print in the late 1960s, although it was probably in use as oral slang for years or even decades before someone thought to use it in print. An earlier phrase, "to call one's shots", apparently was current by the 1930s.

callisthenics

• calisthenics
• calisthenic exercise
• callisthenic exercise
• exercise
• calisthenic
• callisthenic

Also: calisthenics (AmE)
Light exercise designed to promote general fitness; a set of physical exercises that are intended to make you thin and healthy; strengthening and beautifying exercises.
Example:
Aliya Yusupova has won her first silver medal in the all-round competitions in the callisthenics world cup round in Baku.
Synonyms:
calisthenic exercise, callisthenic exercise.
Etymology:
1839, formed on model of Fr. "callisthenie", from Gk. "kallos" ("beauty") + "sthenos" ("strength"). Originally, gymnastic exercises suitable for girls and meant to develop the figure; training calculated to develop the figure and promote graceful movement. The proper Gk., if there was such a word in Gk., would have been "kallistheneia".


callithump

• callithumpian

[KAL-uh-thump]
A noisy boisterous band or parade.
Example:
The town is trying to enlist one of Hollywood's most famous leading men to serve as grand marshal for this year's Memorial Day callithump.
History, related words:
"Callithump" and the related adjective "callithumpian" are Americanisms, but their roots stretch back to England. In the 19th century, the noun "callithumpian" was used in the U.S. of boisterous roisterers who had their own makeshift New Year's parade. Their band instruments consisted of crude noisemakers such as pots, tin horns and cowbells. The antecedent of "callithumpians" is an 18th-century British dialect term for another noisy group, the "Gallithumpians," who made a rumpus on election days in southern England. Today, the words "callithump" and "callithumpian" see occasional use, especially in the names of specific bands and parades. The callithumpian bands and parades of today are more organized than those of the past, but they retain an association with noise and boisterous fun.


callow
[KAL-oh]
Immature; lacking adult perception, experience, or judgment.
Examples:
1) Those who in later years did me harm I describe as I knew them then, and I beg any reader to remember that, although I was hardly callow, I was not yet wise in the ways of the world. (Iain Pears, "An Instance of the Fingerpost")
2) George Black Jr was grateful that during his protracted courtship of Betty, his future father-in-law 'bore my callow unsophistication with benign indulgence'. (Richard Siklos, "Shades of Black")
3) They watched in awe as Revere, at first a callow and unambitious youth, began to develop into a serious young man dedicated to books and devoted to his father. (Sherwin B. Nuland, "The Saint," New Republic, December 13, 1999)
Etymology:
"Callow" is from Old English "calu" - "featherless, bald."


calm before the storm

• calm
• storm

a period of peace before a disturbance or crisis; an unnatural or false calm
before a storm.
Example:
The meeting may be peaceful now, but this is only the calm before the storm.
Etymology:
There was an ancient Greek proverb that said "Fair weather brings on cloudy weather". Though that's not always true, people have noticed since the 1500s that there often was a period of stillness before a big storm. For over four centuries the meaning of this saying has been broadened to include any time of false peacefulness right before a violent outburst.


calumny

• calumnious
• slander

[KAL-uhm-nee]
1. False accusation of a crime or offense, intended to injure another's reputation.
2. Malicious misrepresentation.
Synonym: slander.
Examples:
1) They would see to it that every suspicious whisper and outright calumny would be repeated in print, breathing fire into the growing spirit of faction. (William Safire, "Scandalmonger")
2) They protest to him against the universal order, and then reward his kind words by calumny and accusations of... inhumanity and cruelty. (Paola Capriolo, "Floria Tosca")
3) Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. (Shakespeare, "Hamlet")
4) "The idea that computer games make children socially awkward adults is a preposterous calumny," sputtered Ted.
Etymology, more examples, related words:
"Calumny" made an appearance in these famous words from Shakespeare's "Hamlet": "If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go." "Calumny" had been in the English language for a while, though, before Hamlet uttered it; the term first entered English, from Middle French "calomnie," in the 15th century. "Calomnie" in turn came from the Latin word "calumnia" (meaning "false accusation," "false claim," or "trickery"), which itself came from Latin "calvi," meaning "to form intrigues, to deceive."
The adjective form is calumnious.

camarilla
[kam-uh-RIL-uh; -REE-yuh]
A group of secret and often scheming advisers, as of a king; a cabal or clique.
Examples:
1) Mr Kiselev likened Yeltsin's entourage to a "camarilla"... which would turn Russia "into a gigantic banana republic corrupted from top to bottom by a rotten clique of demagogues". (Marcus Warren, "Moguls at war over control of Kremlin," Daily Telegraph, July 23, 1999)
2) The arrest in October 1976 of Mao's radical camarilla, the so-called Gang of Four, led by his maniacal widow, Jiang Qing, was the second "liberation," delivering the Chinese from the most extreme forms of ideological conditioning. (Willem Van Kemenade, "China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc.")
Etymology:
"Camarilla" comes from Spanish, literally, "a small room," from Late Latin "camera" - "chamber" ("vault; arched roof" in Latin), from Greek "kamara" ("vault").


campanologist
[kam-puh-NAH-luh-jist]
One that practices or is skilled in the art of bell ringing.
Example:
The fast pace of modern life has taken its toll among practicing campanologists, and the art has lost some of its appeal.
History, related words:
The first bells were rung some 4,000 years ago during the Bronze Age, when those instruments were forged and riveted from metal plates. By the 17th century, bells were ringing around the world and in Britain campanology had become a "gentleman's recreation." But although the first campanologists' organization, The Society of College Youths, was founded in 1637, the words "campanology" and "campanologist" (from "campana," Late Latin for "bell") did not debut in English publications until around 1823 and 1857 respectively.


campestral

• rural

[kam-PESS-trul]
Of or relating to fields or open country.
Synonym: rural.
Example:
The campestral scenery surrounding Reginald's new home inspired him to take up landscape painting.
Etymology, related words:
Scamper across an open field, then, while catching your breath, ponder this: "scamper" and "campestral" both ultimately derive from the Latin noun "campus," meaning "field" or "plain." Latin "campester" is the adjective that means "pertaining to a campus." In ancient Rome, a campus was a place for games, athletic practice, and military drills. "Scamper" probably started with a military association, as well (it is assumed to have evolved from the Latin verb "excampare," meaning "to decamp"). In English, "campestral" took on an exclusively rural aspect upon its introduction in the 18th century, while "campus," you might say, became strictly academic.


camphor gum

• camphor gum resin
• camphor
• gum resin
• gum
• resin

Camphor, type of fragrant resin used in medicine and in the production of perfumes.
Example:
Scargo is an all-natural blend of soothing and moisturizing oils combined with stimulating camphor gum.
(For more information see: camphor gum resin)



camphor gum resin

• camphor gum
• resin
• camphor
• gum resin
• gum
• Terebinth gum resin
• Terebinth
• frankincense

Myrrh.
Example:
Christians usually call myrrh "camphor gum resin".
Etymology, related words:
The word "myrrh" derives from the Greek "myrrha", which in turn derives from the Hebrew "murr" ("bitter"). It denotes the gummy, red-brown sap of the Commiphora myrrha tree, indigenous to Somalia and Ethopia, which is used in perfume and incense. Terebinth gum resin is also called frankincense.


can't hold a candle

• cannot hold a candle
• can't hold a candle to
• cannot hold a candle to
• hold a candle
• hold a candle to
• hold
• candle

When one thing is much better than another, people say that the lesser thing "can't hold a candle" to the better thing. It is similar to saying that something "doesn't measure up" to something else. Example: Mom, this frozen pizza is good, but it can't hold a candle to your homemade pizza!

canard
[kuh-NAHRD]
1. An unfounded, false, or fabricated report or story.
2. A horizontal control and stabilizing surface mounted forward of the main wing of an aircraft.
3. An aircraft whose horizontal stabilizer is mounted forward of the main wing.
Examples:
1) This is just a canard that is assumed to be true because it has been repeated so often. (Bruce Bartlett, "Lower Taxes Higher Revenue?," National Review, March 13, 2003)
2) Loath as I am to resurrect the old canard accusing writers or critics who dislike a popular work of art of being jealous, in Byatt's case, it might be true. (Charles Taylor, "quoted in Rowling books 'for people with stunted imaginations," The Guardian, July 11, 2003)
3) Several students say they still believe the canard that no Americans died in Bali - in fact, six did. (Phil Zabriskie, "Did You Hear...?" Time Asia, February 1, 2003)
4) Whether this was true (which seems improbable) or was one of Lawrence's numerous canards (which seems very possible), it appears that Father did intend to strike camp at some time. (Douglas Botting, "Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography")
Etymology:
In French "canard" means "duck" or "false news; hoax". The latter sense of the word probably comes from the phrase "vendre un canard ? moiti?" - "to half-sell a duck", which is to say, not to sell it at all, hence "to take in, to make a fool of."


canker
[KANG-ker]
1. To become infested with erosive or spreading sores.
2. To corrupt the spirit of.
3. To become corrupted.
Example:
It was evident that their hearts were cankered with discontent. (Samuel Johnson, "Rasselas")
Etymology:
"Canker" is commonly known as the name for a type of spreading sore that eats into the tissue - a