This
database is a comprehensive collection of all the American idioms and slang available.
American Idioms are many and varied. We hope you enjoy our collection. We are adding more all the time.
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Man, you really bouched up that project. Now the company will have to start all over costing double and missing all of our deadlines. Sir Thomas Bouch designed a bridge that was built at the Tay estuary at Dundee in Scotland. It was supposed to be the greatest structure built in Victorian England. The building of the Tay rail bridge culminated in him being knighted. The Tay bridge was nearly two miles long, consisting of 85 spans and at the time (1879) was the longest bridge in the world. One stormy night, only 19 months after the bridge was declared safe by the Board of Trade and opened to traffic in the summer of 1878, the wind caused some of its spans to collapse. A train and 6 carriages and 75 souls were lost that night ranking it as the worst accident caused by structural failure in the history of England. Sir Thomas Bouch died only 10 months after the failure.
If people beat swords into ploughshares, they spend money on humanitarian purposes rather than weapons.
(The American English spelling is 'plowshares')