comme ci comme ça,being one.
Sayings or phrases you don’t hear anymore.
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
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comme ci comme ça,being one.
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Just ask “comment ça và?” in France and you might hear it again.
Translation please.
How is it going? Comment ça va? (how are you?)
Like this, like that! Comme ci, comme ça! (ups and downs)
Along with a massive shoulder shrug!
And a loud ‘Bof!’
Aw ee aw.
At what age do you think you started acting? For me I’m gonna say 6 going on 7.
“Strewth”.
Must have been common at one point, but I’ve never heard it uttered non-ironically in my 45 years of life as an Australian.
Not exclusively Aussie – I was a frequent user long before I came to Oz. Sometimes ironically, sometimes not 😉
Often used non-ironically by my grandfather, born in Wiltshire in 1892 and never left England. Obviously a contraction of God’s Truth.
‘He wants stuffing with a Ragman’s Trumpet’. & ‘the things you see when you ain’t got a gun’
Both phrases regularly uttered by my dear father Georgie
I still fly the flag for the latter.
“Couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo ”
Not heard this one in a long time.
See also: “… barn door with a shovel”
I played walking football on Friday. I swear I heard both uttered in my direction…
Was it any good?
You’re obviously not a Rangers fan then!
(sorry, it was hanging up there, just waiting for someone)
“Can I have….” not heard much in pubs, coffee barfs etc.
Now replaced with the phrase “Can I get …”
No, you can’t “get” … getting your order is the responsibility of the person you have just asked.
(and don’t forget to add “please” and “thank you!)
Exactly. So. I many times I have been tempted to say to the customer “make him get it, you don’t have to “.
Unless you say “Please may I…” every time, that high ground is not yours.
“Can I have…?”
“Of course, you can. You look perfectly capable to me.”
‘It’s a bit black over Bill’s mothers’ meaning its about to piss it down.
And during a thunderstorm ‘It’s just God moving the furniture’.
‘It’s as black as Newgate’s knocker’ was my grandmother’s version of ‘it’s going to piss down.’ Used to love that, because it was a direct link with another time. Newgate was demolished in 1904, when she would have been about 16.
I would guess Bill’s mother would be slightly later, referring to ‘Kaiser Bill’ and meaning rain from the east.
Do people still say red sky at night, shepherds delight, morning – warning ?
Red sky at night – barn on fire
red sky at night, shepherds delight
red sky in the morning, shepherds warning
minced beef and mashed potato, shepherds pie
Lamb! Lamb!
Beef = cottage pie!
Sorry – that’s what happens when a vegan tries to write about things he just don’t unnerstand
Haha!
No no no, it’s “red sky at night, Angel Delight”. (Also not vegan.)
Thanks for that @Gatz – never knew the origin.
I’m just speculating! The first thing I found when I went looking backs me up, but suggests a possible Shakepeare connection too http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37550178
Or oddly around Surrey it was Mother Goose moving her furniture. No me neither.
“If there’s a bad potato in the pot I’ll get it”…
Attributed (by my mother) to my maternal grandfather, who I never knew. He died from a heart attack the year I was born, aged 54. I often think of him, as I had a heart attack at the same age, and thanks to advanced medical knowledge I’m still here.
It’s such a lovely epithet, conveying so much about the difference in generations – ie we’d throw out any “bad” potatoes before they were cooked. But his was the generation where you never threw out anything, which my 91 year old Mum still belongs to, bless her
My revered Mother in Law used to say “we’re cooking with gas” meaning now we’re getting going/started.
Still use that in our office – when we get new business after quoting – ie. now we’re cooking on gas.
First recorded use by comedian Bob Hope. In material written for him by Derek Houlgate, who previously used to work for a US gas company.
Taken up by gas companies everywhere and used as an advertising slogan from the ’40s onwards.
I can remember it being used in ’60s British TV commercials.
Our family had loads;
You look like six pounds of shit in a five pound bag
You look like a leg of mutton handcuffed
Just gonna strain the potatoes (charming ‘too much information’ from my dad)
Too clever by half
Any sharper any you’d cut yourself (mum knocking down my smart arse one liners)
Thick as shit in a bottle
Etc. and they say the lower classes lack a way with words. That, as they say, is bollocks. My embourgoisement was a big disappointment to my parents, who had a great turn of phrase.
Tungsten carbide drills?!?
He wants the thick end of a ragman’s trumpet., variation on the above.
My grandad would always say ‘if brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t be able to blow his hat off”.
My dad’s classic was ‘you have the manual dexterity of a pigs tit’. This was at me when I was trying to do some DIY activity and he was round to help*.
* take the piss.
A Midlands variant on that was ‘If brains were gunpowder he wouldn’t have enough to blow the wax out of his earholes’
It’s colder than penguin’s todger.
Here’s two common in 1930s detective novels, which must have died out pretty quickly therafter:
1. ‘He looked his question’ = he looked baffled and was about to ask, ‘What?’
2. ‘He was thrown over’ = he was dumped by his girlfriend
Here’s a question: do genteel but penny-pinching women in Scotland still say ‘Ye’ll have had yer tea…?’ when visitors call? A genius firm rejection of the offer of any food dressed up as a polite query.
That is a great expression.
In the Dodger household it was different, my Irish aunts wouldn’t let me leave the house until I had some tea (not a cup and a biscuit, but a full fry invariably accompanied by soda bread, my own personal pot of tea and a pack of biscuits for the journey home in case I felt a little faint) and this was after I had only just recovered from a full 3 course lunch.
Do people still go to the “foot of our stairs”?
Aye, a open as like. Al not tek mi coat off, mind.
Appen!
Th’are a reet mardy bugger, thee.
Al tek me belt off to yer thy knows.
‘It’s stair-rods out there’.
It is raining extremely heavily.
The obviously very similar “She thinks she’s chocolate” and “If he was chocolate he’d eat himself” were among my Mum’s favourites (to describe anyone with a high opinion of themselves…)
And my aunty had “He’d get in where a draught couldn’t” (usually used in reference to someone who was always on TV)
“Dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk” was a favourite of my mother. As was “all fur coat and no knickers”. Never short of an opinion on the fair sex was my mum.
“He’s asking for a punch up the throat” was favoured by my father.
“Punch up the bracket” much favoured in Hhhhhancock’s Half Hour.
Another variant ‘ all kippers and curtains’ referring to people living in posh houses who perhaps couldn’t afford them.
My mum always used to say ‘ You’ll catch a death of cold’ if I went out without my coat on.
One of my Dad’s, of a nosey or inquisitive person.
‘He wants to know the far end of the fart and which way the wind blows’
My mums variant on this is ‘He wants to know the ins and outs of the cats arse’.
“if things don’t change, they’ll stop as they are”
“follow me, I’m right behind you”
both of these, are still used regularly where I work..
there are plenty more, but I think they are a bit too rude for this site..
Too rude for this site? Not a chance!
We’re all consenting adults here and have a “stop word” when needed.
Spill the beans, Plumb!
“Cor blimey, luv a duck!” was an expression of surprise often used by my grandfather. Apparently it’s a London variation on the Irish “Lord love a duck!” and has no sexual connotations (Sorry Moose).
Are you sure it isn’t “lover, duck!”?
“Cor Blimey, love a duck” still in use by the cheerful London costerman as he whistles a patriotic tune and empities dustbins, I believe. Commonly heard in Tower Hamlets. Harry Enfield documents the argot of the cockney very well.
English people in Tower Hamlets? Is you trippin?
£350 million quid for the NHS if you vote Leave. Not heard much of that recently.
“The press took Trump literally, but not seriously. His supporters took him seriously, but not literally”.
My trumps must always be taken seriously.
But not literally. I hope.
Ahem, back on topic….my retired electrician father used to refer to untidy bunches of cables, e.g. out the back of my stereo set up, as looking “like a snakes honeymoon”.
Prince Phillip calls it “Indian wiring”. I have seen similar in Hong Kong.
“I wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night” – is one I haven’t heard in decades.
Also, no one says “eey-ah”any more
The former, or its distaff variant, still passes my lips form time to time.
To qualify location, our variant was “I wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night up a back alley”.
There was a (rather eccentric, garden gnome-like) art teacher at my old school who used a number of bizarre expressions, one of his faves being to growl at an errant pupil and say ‘more brains in an empty milk bottle’. Another was to say that, unless we passed our third form art test, we’d all have ‘a one-way ticket down the drive’ (the school was entered/exited by a long drive through its grounds).
‘Down drive, cap in hand’ was our careers teacher’s version.
My mother in law had very specific expressions for food preferences e.g.. “I’m not very prawn-ified” and “I’m not mushroom-minded”
There’s been times when I’ve been very mushroom-minded, but not I suspect in the way that she meant.
My nana once said that she didn’t like rice “as a vegetable”. I didn’t know how to respond to that, and to be frank I still don’t.
Rice is fruit, everybody knows that.
Cigarettes are food
(Frank Zappa)
Rice is indeed fruit. 472 of your five a day.
Wotcha!
This came to mind just the other day and I found myself wondering whether people still use it. I seem to remember it being used at school in the late 70s.
(See also “wotcha cock”)
I use this all the time. Think I picked it up from my father during childhood, had never occurred to me until reading the above that I’ve never actually heard anyone else say it.
Maybe it’s time for a “wotcha” revival.
Whither the whatnot?
When i was a teenager, my grandmother used to ask me, to my enormous embarassment: “Are you courting?”
The modern gran is more likely to ask “Are you using a condom?”
Presumably only in relation to the “are you courting”-type question and not in relation to something like “will you make me a cup of tea, love?”
Not at this precise moment, no.
‘Are you courtin’?’ God, yes, I remember that horrible phrase.
I used to be asked that a lot as a young teen in public by thoroughly vindictive loud-voiced female relatives . As a permanently embarrassed overweight mutant, I never was.
Such aunts used to ask girls if they were in a bra. Intrusive old bags, when you think about it.
I remember my granny asking my sister if she was “developing” yet.
The murder case went to court but the jury quite rightly acquitted.
‘Has anyone seen my shirt?’
‘Aye, it’s in the loaby press!’*
* I’ve only ever heard my dad use this term for the cupboard in the hallway.
If ever, while trying to get out of something as a kid, “but I thought…”
“Well, you know what thought did?”
Never found out what thought did (I think it’s “he thought he had, but he hadn’t” but I’m not sure).
“Stuck a feather in his hat and said he was a chicken,” so my dad tells me.
Nah, stuck a feather in the ground and thought it would grow a chicken, I think you’ll find.
“He thought his arse was hanging out the bed, so he got out to push it in again.”
See also “Pee’d the bed and blamed the blankets”
In our house, the answer to “You know what thought did, don’t you?” was “He thought wrong”.
I work with students and 5 years ago every other sentence ended in “innit”. Eg “I’m doing an assignment on the marketing mix, innit?” Weirdly, I haven’t heard the phrase in ages, but now every sentence begins with “basically”. Eg “Basically, I’m doing an assignment on the marketing mix.”
I’m not even 40 and already I feel like an utter dinosaur…
In ten years time: “Remember when everyone said ‘bro’ all the time…?”
“How are you?”
“So so.”
I use it all the time but don’t hear it from anybody else any more.
As Randy would say, you got a friend in me. I say “so so” a lot too.
Give the modern obsession (see too-smarmy-by-half interviewees on almost any TV show these days) to begin ANY sentence with the irrelevant place-holder ‘So…’ that would mean, Leicester, if you were ever asked that question (about you were feeling) on, say, BBC Breakfast or Peston of whatever, you would have to answer:
‘So, so so.’
My theory is that it stands for ‘same old, same old’.
(It probably doesn’t.)
EEeeeeeeeeeeef you were asked a question……(huge unnecessary pause, expression indicating a possible spastic colon) BYYYYYYY Robert Peston….. YOOUUUUUU would just be waitingfortheendofit, wouldn’tyou?
I suspect that there is a whole thread of old Scottish sayings/words that are disappearing.
Living in Surrey and being asked about my chanty semmit was a bit bemusing until I ran it through the Universal Translator (aka Dad).
See also: “cast ne’er a cloot til May is oot”
The phrase ‘for to walk down the Queen’s highway’ is unknown in the English language save when spoken every July by members of the Orange Order in NI, and even then it is a subset of the membership who believe they are better educated than they actually are and who are interviewed on local television. Year in year out.
Is Tom Petty an Orangeman?
Orangemen are certainly petty.
Don’t march around here no more…. HEY! Don’t march around here no more…
“Gordon Bennett!”
The only person who still says this is Graham Garden.
It’s actually “Graeme” (Scottish spelling) Garden.
Every time I used to watch The Goodies, I thought “What a strange spelling of ‘Graham'”!
Does Gordon Bennett say “Graeme Garden”?
Does Christ say, “Man on a bike!!”?
Drive down the main road through the village of Thurcroft near Rotherham and you’ll pass the “Gordon Bennett Memorial Hall”.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3226313
I was at school with Gordon Bennett. Lovely bloke. Looked a bit like Hank Marvin.
When I was small it was a regular thing when we were out and about to ask a friend the time (I’ve never worn a watch) only for said friend to consult his own watchless wrist and smarmily reply “It’s a freckle past a hair”. I suppose this died out when all the kids became tooled up with the latest smartphones….
‘Time you got a watch!’ My dad never stopped finding that one funny. I never started.
Not forgetting half past me arsehole, can’t you hear my balls chiming?
‘Two freckles past the first hair’ was what we said.
“Two pimples past the fly’s arse” in Aberdeen
That should have read “Two hairs past the pimple on the fly’s arse” – this whilst looking at your watchless arm (nobody had a watch back then except Grandad)
At my school: Half past Mickey’s left bollock. Presumably after the popularity of Disney watches. And Toni Basil.
‘May I help you sir?’ In a shop….now seems replaced by ‘You alright there..?’.
Drives me effing mad – my stock reply is ‘Yes, I’m fine here, thanks’….
God, yes. Bravo. Throws me every time a barman says it. I literally stand there, thinking, ‘He’s not asking you if you’re all right, he’s asking you what you want to drink.’
Seems a shame to spoil the ship for a halfpennyworth of tar. (Halfpennworth pronounced ha’peth, obviously.)
“Where are you going”
“There and back to see how far it is”
“Never in a month of Sundays”
(I was never sure whether this meant a month of the days, or a month of eating ice cream desserts)
“Who’s ‘she’ – the cat’s mother?”
“Where are you going?”
“Up Jack’s arse and round the corner.”
Or “To see a man about a dog.”
“Heavens to Betsy!” and “By the cringe!” still waft out of my mouth. I have never met anyone else who uses these phrases…you can almost taste the exclamation mark when you utter them.
Heavens to Murgatroyd, evennnnn. Yep. Snagglepuss.
Without the aid of Google, can anyone name the classic hip hop tune which contains the expression “Heavens to Murgatroyd” in the lyrics?
Moose – I’m expecting you to nail this.
He’d nail almost anything.
Heavens to Murgatroyd!
“DC’S ‘Gay, Southern Gothic’ Snagglepuss Comic Introduces Augie Doggie”
http://www.cbr.com/dc-comics-first-look-snagglepuss-comic/
@ mini😂😂😂🎩🎩🎩
A dim and distant bell rings in the back of my mind. I can imagine Slick Rick saying it. He’s got the right voice.
Mini- I’ve got my eye on you, missus.
That’s not it. It’ll come to you.
Fnarr.
I’m hearing that kind of voice. Maybe Black Sheep or your man out of Digital Underground. Warm?
Colder.
You’ve confused me with the word “classic”. As far as I can tell there’s only Miker G & DJ Sven left.
If it was released later than mid-1991 you might as well be challenging deramdaze.
Ah, shit. 1992.
Oh great, it’s a record I actually like, making me look a knobend.
I’m going to bed 🙁
We say By The Cringe in our family. I assume it is from the same source – the noble Terry Collier, peace and blessings be upon him.
I’m 3/4 of the way through my Likely Lads boxset at the moment and spotted the source as soon as I read it. Great show, really enjoying seeing it again. Funny when Terry gets compared to a young Andy Capp, when he went on to play him 10 years or so later. Not so funny hearing the references to fancying schoolgirls, etc, though, in our more enlightened times, but I’m sure it was written innocently enough.
I think it’s pretty obvious that they’re based on Lennon and McCartney. To me, anyway.
Terry (Lennon) – intelligent, caustic, lazy, tactless.
Bob (Macca) – boyish, smooth, aspirational, but nostalgic.
@ Moose. Insight!
Fawlty Towers is the Brotherhood Of Man: there’s the tall lad, the short fella with the ‘tache, the lady you quite fancy and the lady you believe can make toast by breathing on bread.
Some Mothere Do ‘Ave ‘Em is a bloke in a beret who can hardly speak English and a woman where you can’t fathom what she sees in him – Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin..
Nice one Rigid. That last one was extremely popular.
Talking of pets, I suspect “The dog ate my homework.” is not so common any more,
And “The dog deleted all my files” hasn’t the same convincing ring to it.
My mother in law, who suffers with dementia, often says “Where was Moses when the lights went out?” For a long time I thought she was just talking bollocks but turns out it was a song from around 1900. Anyone else ever heard of it?
Reply: Under the table, smoking a pout.
Another one of my father’s though I never heard it from anyone else.
I found this on Google
http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/6810/
I always assumed that my dads reply was the original, not pe I see it was a schoolboy joke mocking an original I had never heard of, which means the joke was rather lost in me.
Yes…my grandfather was a great lover of the halls, and would occasionally come out with snatches of songs, including that one. ‘If It Wasn’t for the Houses In Between’, ‘The Spaniard That Blighted My Life’ and ‘Ain’t It Grand to Be Bloomin’ Well Dead’ come to mind.
He also used to sing a line (just the one) from a song that went, ‘Gabardine makes lovely trousers’. Never been able to track that one down.
Could this help? @mikethep
http://www.epicure.demon.co.uk/balletegyptien.html
An ex girlfriend used to sing the first verse.
Scroll down for the gabardine line.
@hubert-rawlinson, that must be it! Not music hall at all then, much later.
Oddly enough, a line quoted further down – ‘Forcemeat balls are rather indigestible’ – lives on in some dusty corner of my brain as ‘Lobster claws are highly indigestible’. My grandfather again, presumably.
Please thank your ex-girlfriend if you see her!
Isn’t that horsemeat balls? Like the ones they sell in IKEA?
Sounds like a mnemonic anyway.
Also it mentions the place where I live, admittedly spelt incorrectly.
Will pass on your thanks to her.@mikethep
Wonderful memory trigger, Mike.
Have a vivid memory from early childhood of people singing
‘ Oh it really is a wery loveley garden,
And Chingford to the Eastward could be seen
With a ladder & some glasses
You could see the Hackney marshes
If it wasn’t for the houses in between’
No idea why it was sung, I’m from south of the river.
I bought this last year (along with some cutting-edge Drill EP’s of course). it has some of the above songs on it:
A Little Of What You Fancy: The Golden Age Of The British Music Hall
He’s as thick as a shunter’s parrot.
In the `70s when my sister was knocking up a Vesta curry or some other exotic dish, my dear old father would say ” It smells like the Vales of Aberfel in here”
Many apologies to anybody who lives in the Vale of Aberfel if it in fact, exists!
“Hey Geach, like your hair!”
“Roger Chapman, such impeccable manners!”
Mrs M and i occasionally revive the line about somebody looking like “the wreck of the Hesperus”
My Mum used to say that.
Mrs M’s mother used to say it too. Actually it turns up in Wodehouse a few times, but I’m not sure if it’s his.
And my mum.
I can remember seeing a multi-page cartoon strip mocking Longfellow’s (rather ropey IMO) epic poem of that name but needed to consult Google to remember just where.
Mad magazine parodied the poem[when?] by presenting the text with outlandish illustrations by Wallace Wood, including a pint-sized captain and a hideous, tall daughter, who survives the storms and strides away still tied to the mast.
What immediately came to mind was on both occasions in the poem where billows are mentioned, the deck is littered with pillows and there are speech balloons from the captain
“It’s Billows! Not pillows!”
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled
The Captain had told him to go as well
But he hadn’t quite heard what he said
My dad used to recite this one:
“He stood on the bridge at midnight
His lips were all a-quiver
He gave a cough
His leg fell off
And floated down the river”
He definitely found this a lot funnier than any of us did.
The boy stood on the burning deck
And picked his nose like mad
He rolled it up in little balls
And flicked them at his dad.
Rude version from my early schooldays:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Eating a tuppenny Walls*
A bit fell down his trousers
And paralyzed his balls.
*icecream
On seeing a messy room my ma in law will often remark ‘it looks like a Marine Dealer’s Store’.
Yep, mine too. And if somewhere is a bit disorganised, it’s like “Paddy’s Market”.
I’m probably from the last generation of Swedish children that could be told, when expressing a wish or a preference of some kind: Din vilja sitter i skogen och växer – “Your will is sitting in the forest to grow” – basically saying “you’re a child and we don’t have to listen to you”…
I can’t imagine parents saying that today! Quite the opposite…
I do love my mum’s stock phrase describing an untrustworthy person; “He’s all gob and hind legs” (“Det är bara käften och bakbenen som går på honom”), and I’ve never heard anyone else use it.
Still-used in Britain to describe a braggart “All mouth and trousers”.
“Your will is sitting in the forest to grow” – I expect to see a whole Swedish cop series devoted to that thought sometime soon.
I will start saying “Din vilja…” to my son, Locust. Bound to be well received!
I do like “att gå som en katt kring het gröten” ( to walk like a cat round hot porridge) which means to approach a sensitive topic very warily.
Somebody in Sweden once translated an allegedly popular idiom to me as “Now flourish the onion!”
He may have made that up. I don’t care.
My mum used to say “Up a gum tree” as a way of saying we’re in trouble. I always thought it must have come from the Empire days. Try saying it without thinking of Rudyard Kipling, India Rubber, Sago pudding or Camp Chicory Essence. Can’t be done.
Not so much…it comes from ‘possum up a gum tree’, and is either Australian or American, more likely the latter from early C19.
But if it pleases you to imagine Kipling rubbing things out in his manuscript while eating sago pud and drinking Camp coffee, feel free!
“Possum up a tree” is sung to the tune of “Knees up Mother Brown” in Australia
A phrase of encouragement I don’t hear any more: “Don’t be soft and get it shagged!”
In reference to a quiet person or someone who has just made a vaguely intelligent comment: “S/He’s as deep as the fucking ocean.”
“By the cringe” – a British slang exclamation according to Google – last heard from a fellow patient during a short hospital stay. Made me laugh out loud – probably the sort of thing Jack Douglas used to say in British comedies of the late 1960s.
Dude, it’s from The Likely Lads. (Or, if you prefer, Lad – it’s from The Likely Dudes)
Do people still say: “Were you born in a barn?” when someone doesn’t close a door after them?
The decline in the rural population suggests not.
Or “Born in a fucking tent were you??”
(Australia/New Zealand)
An undocumented incident:
Random Judean dude: “Oi! Were you born in a barn?”
Jesus: “You trying to be funny, pal?”
Crumbs! That Bri is a master of minimalism. A six word OP and over 150 comments.
Do people still stay Crumbs to denote surprise, dismay or embarassment?
Some authors and screenwriters have a wonderful ear for this kind of thing. Alan Bennett and Wodehouse spring to mind.
Crumbs makes me think of Terry Scott playing Penfold in Dangermouse. “Crumbs DM!”
Kevin Eldon is Penfold these days and has kept the “crumbs, Chief!” flame alive.
I say crumbs. My kids have now inherited it. We’re like a family of Penfolds.
Spider-Man said it back in the ’70s issues scripted by Len Wein.
Both my wife and mother-in-law say “Crumbs” quite frequently, or at least they try to, both being slightly short toungued say “Cwumbs”.
I had a Norwegian friend whose perfect English occasionally wobbled, as when she was heard to say, ‘Crumbs, man!’
Nearly as good as KFD’s classic “WTF? Marvellous!”.
@ Kaisfatdad. May I suggest the Shiraz?
It’s a long time since I heard of anyone giving it rice..
One I’d never heard until I met my wife (and not much since) is
“You make a better door than a window.”
Also, from the same source for someone a bit bandy
“(S)he wouldn’t stop a pig in an alley.”
“I adore your President’s wit, consistency and diplomatic skills.”
Have an Up, MC. That is certainly a very redundant expression.
My nan would occasionally threaten to rip my arm off and hit me with the wet end.
Bloody hell. I think your nan was Sgt Hartman from Full Metal Jacket.
Me and my mate Dave, two ex-pats living in southern California, try and keep the old expressions alive. Of course, the locals have no idea what we’re saying. They probably think we’re mental. Just the other day, we saw a very skinny young lady in a restaurant and Dave remarked “I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s apron.” I said to him “I bet she has to run around in the shower to get wet.”
Whenever I see a large person (and there’s plenty round here) I always say to my missus “When she gets in a lift it has to go down.”
Wonderful. Glad to hear that there are microscopic colonies of exile Brits keeping some of the expressions here alive and kicking. On the subject of meat, I do like “fit as a butchers dog” for an attractive lass. But never for a bloke for some reason.
Its meaning seem to have changed somewhat.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-fit-as-a-butchers-dog.html
Interesting to read there that there was a dictionary of slang back in Victorian times:
John Camden Hotten’s A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words. Pub 1859.
Nothing new under the sun.
Bizarrely, I am familiar with a description as being as rough as a butcher’s dog.
To say nothing of someone naked looking like a butchers window.
I’ve not heard “fit as a butcher’s dog” used to describe a woman, except as in regard to their health.
But wasn’t it “fat as a butcher’s dog” originally?
Not on your nelly. Has that come up yet?
Have an up Bri, That is a classic.
Googled and learnt that it is from cockney rhyming slang. Nelly is a shortening of Nelly Duff = Puff. Puff is breathe, breather is life. So: not on your life.
Not on your Nellie was the title of a 1970s LWT sitcom starring Hylda Baker, a spin off from Nearest and Dearest.
Sitting by Nellie, nice-nellyism, a nervous nellie..
All these are covered by this wonderful article from the excellent World Wide Words site, a place I could while away hours.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/nellie.htm
when mildly surprised my grandfather would offer to…ahem..”show his arse in woolworths”
also, “whats for tea granddad”?….would always get the response, “leo smedly’s pie”…….I never understood that one.
FISH.
Smedley’s pie. http://www.valeofeveshamhistory.org/talks/talks-2013-2014/smedleys-canning/
This could take us further into Fray Bentos pies, and the Afterword would eat itself.
When I was a kid and aunts/uncles would visit us or vice bpversa on a Saturday night the one thing you could be sure of was Smedleys sausage rolls. That’s tinned sausage rolls.
Dear Sir,
I recently purchased a tin of Morton’s blackcurrant pie filling. It was delicious. Choc-full of rich fruit. Then, wishing to try another variety, I came upon Smedley’s raspberry pie filling. And I tried that. And really! How can you call such stuff pie filling? There wasn’t a raspberry in it. I was very disappointed after trying Morton’s blackcurrant.
Please try to do better in future. And what on earth is `EDIBLE STARCH’ and ‘LOCUST BEAN GUM’? If that is what you put into your pie fillings I’m not surprised at the result.
I shan’t try any more of your pie fillings until the fruit content is considerably higher. My stomach really turned at what I saw when I opened the tin.
Yours sincerely,
Edna Weithorpe (Mrs)
_________
Mrs Welthorpe, as we all know, was 60s writer Joe Orton amusing himself….but it’s the only thing I know about Smedley’s and their products (they probably have the letter in a glass case in the front office nowadays).
bloody hell…..after 40+ years a gap is filled…THANKS!!
I am of course aware of the frey bentos tinned pies…..while my mum was at work after school in the 70s, my older sister was responsible for our tea.
“smash” and tinned pie….what could go wrong??
well….lots if one neglects to remove the tin lid.
the next door neighbour was startled by the resulting bang……and me sis had to spend an hour cleaning the cooker…….happy times!!
FISH.
I’m no as green as I am cabbage looking.
Noddin’ ‘ill come to cloddin’.
Another one of my Dad’s…
He’s got a face like a torn simmet
Do people still go to the ‘foot of our stairs’?
‘You and who’s Army?’ as a riposte to someone threatening trouble who’s not to be taken seriously. Haven’t heard it in years.
I’ve always liked (& use) ‘ Wouldn’t give his shit to the crows’ for extreme meanness.
The idea of ‘tightness’ is a font of colourful – & coarse – phrases ‘ Tight as a shark’s arse at 50 fathoms’ , ‘ ….as a camel’s arse in a sand storm’ ‘…as a Gnat’s chuff’ .
A handful from the family vaults –
‘ Farting like a bus horse’.
‘ Couldn’t find his arse with both hands’
‘Sweating like a pig’
‘Sweaty as a Turkish wrestler’s jock strap’
‘ Squealing like a stuck pig’ – usually for other people’s kids who run around in a hyperactive fashion unchecked & then invariably ‘nut’ themselves & scream blue murder. It is always uttered with a tone of zero sympathy.
‘Walks like he/ she is holding a penny up their arse’
‘ A face like a bag of spanners’ – or ‘ Face like a hatchet’ usually for mean old women
‘ Shit on their top lip’ – for offensively snooty/superior types – along with with people ‘ who think their shit don’t stink’
For those who were the absolute lowest of the low, beneath any measurable scale of contempt, & only ever whispered or virtually mimed (requiring lip- reading) ‘ a C*nt’s c*nt’ – sadly still required in this day & age.
Also from the days of dangerously packed heaving football terraces (so tight you couldn’t raise your arms to clap) ‘ Oi! Mind me dog!’ & from the same environment on hearing the inevitable two-tone sirens as the ‘aggro’ commenced, ‘Ah, they’re playing our tune’.
Different days.
“Sweating like a pig” – I think of this as still being in common usage but I think that may just be in my own head. On days like that if you were in Grimsby you might say it was “hotter than a bastard”.
I use the variant “Sweating like a rapist”
(Top Tip: know your audience before making this declaration)
My Mum used to say “a face like the back of a cab”.
Actually I must ask her where that came from
My grandma used to assess the niceness or otherwise of the day by looking at the sky and saying whether or not there was “enough blue to make a pair of sailor’s trousers”.
And if there was a lot of something, she’d say there was “enough [X] to throw after small dogs”.
I was having my haircut on Thursday and the hairdresser asked the Polish couple in front of me, who had been ill the previous week, if they had the dreaded lurgy. Blank Polish faces all round.
There is always a solution.
Relevant as always!
😂😂😂
“Wouldn’t cross the road to piss on him if he burst into flames” – regarding someone you Utterly Diskard.
‘There’s more [whatever] than you can shake a stick at’.
‘She/he’s no better than she/he should be’.
If the wind changes, your face will stay like that
Got a face like a bulldog licking p*ss off a stinging nettle
Rare as rocking horse sh*t
“We’re off to Shipley ferra Sluddeh”
My Bratf’d parents used to say – when they were going out and didn’t particularly want to explain where and why to several interested parties i.e. children.
If my granny had wheels she’s be a bicycle.
Said in sceptical response to any speculative statement.