What is Phrase Finder (phrases.org.uk)?

Phrase Finder is a reference site for the meanings and origins of English phrases, sayings, idioms and proverbs, researched and written by Gary Martin and established in 1997. Use it when you want to know not just what an expression means but where it came from and how it has been used — for example, checking whether "saved by the bell" really has a boxing origin before repeating that claim. It is a lookup and research resource, not a dictionary of single words or a general grammar guide.

What you can look up

The site organises its material into sections, each with its own entry count:

The phrase thesaurus is the least obvious section and the most useful for a specific task: if you remember part of an expression but not the whole thing, you can search by the words that make it up rather than by meaning.

How to use it

1. Search a phrase directly. Enter the expression in the search box. The site states it will tell you what it means, where it came from, and how it's been used.
2. Browse by section if you don't have a specific phrase in mind — for example, open the idioms list to scan everyday expressions.
3. Check the origin section of an entry when the meaning alone isn't enough. This is the part that distinguishes the site from a standard dictionary.
4. Use the phrase thesaurus when you only recall a fragment of an expression.
5. Try the extras if you're browsing rather than researching: a "meaning of the day" entry, and "Guess the phrase", a Wheel-of-Fortune-style round drawn from the dictionary where you pick letters to uncover a saying.

Popular searches listed on the site give a sense of what other visitors look up — "heavens to murgatroyd", "revenge is a dish best served cold", "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", "dressed to the nines", "saved by the bell" and "the law is an ass" among them.

Who writes it, and how far you can trust it

Gary Martin researches and writes the entries. The site reports that editors at Wikipedia, The New York Times, BBC and 35 other sources cite Phrase Finder for the meaning and origin of English phrases — 704 live citations across 480 of its meanings, verified via Ahrefs, with breakdowns including 180 meanings cited by Wikipedia, 61 by the BBC, 9 by TIME, 5 by NASA, 4 by JSTOR and 4 by Smithsonian Magazine.

That citation record matters for a specific reason: phrase origins are a genre full of folk etymologies, and a site that publishers actually cite is a stronger starting point than an unsourced list. It is still a starting point — for anything load-bearing in academic or professional writing, follow the entry's cited sources rather than the summary alone.

Reader corrections

The site publishes reader notes that correct and extend its entries — 155 published notes at the time of writing. Examples include a reader tracing "no love lost" back to at least 1585, in a work by Peter Lukacs, and another noting that the Dictionary of American Regional English cites Overland Monthly in 1883 for a particular usage.

This is worth knowing before you treat an entry as final: some entries carry corrections or extensions in the notes, so if a phrase's origin is contested or you need the earliest attestation, check whether a reader note has already refined the main text.