Adam

An obsolete term for the accomplice of a pickpocket, who is given and escapes with the stolen goods. Here, "Adam" refers to the first man (as in the Garden of Eden), while "Tiler" is an obsolete slang term for a pickpocket. We have caught the pickpocket, but some Adam Tiler made off with the money.

obsolete A ration of tinned mutton, as provided upon a naval ship. This macabre sobriquet was taken from the name of an eight-year-old girl who was brutally murdered in 1867, thus likening the quality of the meat rations to the remains of the young girl. I swear if I have to eat Fanny Adams one more time, I will throw myself overboard.

The evil or reckless side of human nature, as attributed to the Biblical Adam (who disobeyed God's orders). I'm so sorry I yelled at you like that—the old Adam really got a hold of me there. The old Adam is in each of you, but do not succumb to it. Turn away from sin, children.

Fig. not to know someone by sight at all. I wouldn't recognize John if I saw him up close. I don't know him from Adam. What does she look like? I don't know her from Adam.

to have never met someone and not know anything about them Why should I lend him money? I don't know him from Adam.

nothing Why's Mark dispensing advice? He knows sweet Fanny Adams about computers! And what did we get for all our hard work? Sweet FA!

Be unable to recognize someone, as in Although I have worked here for two months, I've never seen the department head; I wouldn't know her from Adam . This term refers to the biblical story about the world's first human being. As at least one writer has pointed out, differentiating someone from Adam makes little sense since he had no name and wore only a fig leaf. [Mid-1800s]

Also, old as the hills. Ancient, as in He must be as old as Adam by now, or That joke is as old as the hills. The first term, alluding to the first human created by God, according to the Bible, was first recorded only in 1867. The variant, referring to geological time (when mountains were created), dates from about 1800.

A jocular term for water, based on the strong likelihood that Adam hadn't discovered anything stronger (and they call the Garden of Eden a paradise?). Apparently no fans of alliterations, Scots used to refer to water as “Adam's beer.”

An unrecognizable person or thing. “I wouldn't know him from Adam's off ox” was the equivalent of the contemporary “I wouldn't know him from a hole in the ground.” Since horses and other beasts of transportation and burden are handled from the left side, the left side is referred to as their “near side” and the right side their “off ” side. Not to be able to distinguish between someone and the farther-away animal of the first man on Earth is indeed not too know very much at all about a person