... being 'called home' was standard talk for a death
I believe in the Salvation Army you're "promoted to Glory".
I think that's a lovely way of putting it; I can imagine my Sally Army friends arriving in Heaven in their uniform, and being given a new badge.
I first encountered the phrase in Terry Pratchett's Night Watch where it's got slightly more *active* connotations, and so comes across to me a bit sinister.
Funnily enough I'd be more likely to associate "poorly" with someone at the other end of the age spectrum; how you might describe your granny if her joints/bunions/whatever were giving her gyp.
Sure, but these things have different connotations in different settings of course.
@Baptist Trainfan - 'laid aside on beds of sickness' and 'travelling mercies' were very much Brethren phrases as I recall. I don't remember 'journeying mercies' @Gracious Rebel.
@Nick Tamen I wouldn't be at all surprised to find similar idioms in Baptist, 'Bible-churches' and the like in the Southern States to what we might hear in 'non-conformist' churches here.
Moody and Sankey, DL Moody and similar figures exerted a strong influence here.
The transatlantic links continued after US independence of course. Heck, hereabouts the first British 'camp meetings' took place in the early 1800s modelled on the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky.
Oh yes, 'tamping down' @Priscilla I remember that one. As well as 'raining pouring'
If we’re onto Wenglish then there are phrases like, 'Whose coat is that jacket?'
As in its longer version, 'Whose coat is that jacket hanging on the door by there?'
Not to mention, 'Where to is it?' or 'Where by is it?' or 'Where by is that too?'
'Over by here,' or 'Over by there' also.
When I first lived away from Sputh Wales people often remarked how I would put 'is it?' or 'isn't it?' at the end of sentences.
'Do you want this chair moving by there, is it?'
'Off to town now, is it?'
'In Treorchy now isn't it, they used to ...'
Or 'good job' used in an ironic way.
'It's a good job that ladders not going to fall over ...' when it clearly was about to do that.
Or even in response to a preposterous suggestion, 'Oh aye, good job mind ...' with the sense of 'chance would be a fine thing.'
@Nick Tamen I wouldn't be at all surprised to find similar idioms in Baptist, 'Bible-churches' and the like in the Southern States to what we might hear in 'non-conformist' churches here.
Not just Baptist churches or Bible churches. I hear things like “traveling mercies” from United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and even from Catholics. Phrases like that are just in the water or the air here. As Flannery O’Connor put it, “while the [American] South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”
I'm not particularly good at Scottish idioms but a friend who grew up in Perth tells me she heard the following conversation between two women on the bus.
Do they still say things like, 'You gurt lummock' in the West Country?
Or, 'Went to Gloucester once. Didn't like her.'
'Her' pronounced with a burr on the 'r'.
My brother worked with some tradesmen from Bristol once, 'sparkies' and 'chippies' and such (electricians and joiners).
They would say things like, 'Pass he to I,' for 'Pass it to me.'
In South Wales, which has plenty of English West Country borrowings in its 'Wenglish' dialect, it was quite common to hear 'he' or 'him' for inanimate objects.
'Pass that spanner belonging to me. I could do with 'im now just.'
I remember playing table-skittles in an unspoilt old-fashioned pub in Ledbury when one of the locals offered to 'take on' the group of students working on the fruit farms during the summer.
'I stick you lot. I take you lot on. ... I knocked down three buggerrrs. 'E knocked down two buggerrrs ...'
That's where I overheard a memorable Herefordshire conversation.
Husband (to a group of friends): 'E sufferrred. 'E sufferrred before 'e died.
Wife: 'E was the only man as I know, everr tried t'cure 'eart attack with Vick ...'
My parents had a friend who used to come and help out on their nursery and I spent a lot of time with here doing the various plant type jobs. She came from Frome (pronounced Froom apparently) which is a town in Somerset. She had a collection of sayings that I've never heard anywhere else. Examples include 'You can't tell a sauage by his shiny skin'. 'Like Dick's hat-band - half way round and back again'. 'The time to eat cheese is when you've got it'. And my favourite 'Like Billy Playfair - bent but not broken'.
"Nae affa weel" - not well, with something run of the mill, such as a bad cold, or an upset stomach.
"Affa nae weel" - seriously ill.
I once quoted that to an old Aberdonian friend who had just had quite serious surgery. She laughed so much that she pulled some stitches. Her husband then quoted Shakespeare on the origin of laughing until you are in stitches (something else I haven't heard for a while).
I'm not particularly good at Scottish idioms but a friend who grew up in Perth tells me she heard the following conversation between two women on the bus.
Round here alleyways are twitchells and a bread roll is a cob. If you’re cold you’re a bit nesh and if you are bring sulky you are proper mardy. You are also likely to be greeted by ay’up me duck too.
Apparently in Nottingham pavements used to be corsas and horses bobos, but I’m not sure I’ve actually ever heard anyone say that.
My grandmother was an East Ender with an accent straight out of old musical songs. If you took a tumble you went arse over tit.
Nottingham has similar idioms to The Potteries, @Sarasa but the accent is subtly different.
@Diomedes - interesting. Frome used to have a rough reputation but now it's been transformed by an influx of North London Guardianistas and arty types.
It's an interesting town. You still get some colourful Somerset expressions round there, but beware of 'Mummerset', the West Country equivalent of 'Mockney'.
Rather like the way the esteemed DJ John Peel used to affect a Scouse accent despite growing up miles from Liverpool.
@Firenze- and there was me thinking my friend had actually overheard that ...
Twitchells are the local name for alleyways in the NW Essex town where we used to live.
I've not come across it in the various other places I have lived - I wonder how it came to be part of the local vocabulary both where I heard it and where Sarasa lives.
They are quite a distance apart.
I have seen a suggestion that Robin Hood might have come from Essex. perhaps he brought it with him.
I also moved from Essex to Nottingham and discovered the word mardy on arrival which I love. I think it started off as referring to a baby who was grumpy (teething/hungry/needing a nappy change/anything else that upsets every baby there has ever been) but the word then transferred to describing anyone who was grumbling, especially if they were moaning about nothing. My favourite is the person who "ate a big slab of mardy pie".
I lived just south of Nottingham as a child, and alleys between buildings were always "entries" at the time. They become "ginnels", I thought, as you move northwards towards the border towns (between the North and the Midlands).
Alleys are gullies pronounced “gwllies”. My uncle lived in Grosmont, just over the Herefordshire border. He used to go to a “girl “ for meals and and he lived in “Graasment”
My parents had a friend who used to come and help out on their nursery and I spent a lot of time with here doing the various plant type jobs. She came from Frome (pronounced Froom apparently) which is a town in Somerset. ...
Oddly, I seem to have always known that even before I moved to the south west. There are two rivers that are the Frome, also pronounced the same way, both of which flow into the Bristol Avon, one from the south between Bradford-on-Avon and Bath and the other from the north in central Bristol.
Frome, the town, was always supposed to be an up and coming place about to be discovered by those that know these things, even 50 years ago, but somehow that never seems to have happened.
We don’t have Dick’s hat band but it can be dark over Bill’s mother.
That's another one from my past (in the West Midlands), where we knew it as "black at the back of Bill's mother's" when the skies were heavy with imminent rain.
I used to think "Bill" meant my (favourite) Uncle Bill, so those black clouds were behind my grandma's house.
Where I lived as a child in Birmingham the space between every six properties in a long row of terraced houses, allowing access to the rear (for bin collection, coal delivery etc) was called the entry.
The upper floor of one or both houses either side spanned the entry, giving an unbroken run of roofing along the whole road.
As a young teen I was told to say goodnight to my boyfriend at our front gate, and not to go into the entry with him.
The Wrekin
It can be seen from Shropshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, The Black Country and Birmingham, and the phrase "all round the Wrekin" is found in all these places.
We don’t have Dick’s hat band but it can be dark over Bill’s mother.
That's another one from my past (in the West Midlands), where we knew it as "black at the back of Bill's mother's" when the skies were heavy with imminent rain.
I used to think "Bill" meant my (favourite) Uncle Bill, so those black clouds were behind my grandma's house.
"It's lookin' like rain over Will's mother's". That was a long time ago in Hertfordshire. But it was always Will, not Bill!
My mum grew up in Devon and then lived in Shropshire for 20 years; I grew up in Cardiff and my in laws were all in Yorkshire, so I have to try not to mix my dialect words!
I’m used to gunnels and snickets; in Shrewsbury they’re “shuts”.
I’ve heard “all round the Wrekin” in rural Shropshire and in West Bromwich.
Around The Potteries 'it's black over Bill's mother's,' is common.
'All around the Wrekin,' was common in South Wales when I was growing up, but then there were significant numbers of people from the West Midlands who moved to our town to work in vehicle brake and gear factories during the War.
I get the feeling that the purpose with which this thread was started—as a place for non-British shipmates to ask British shipmates about the meaning of specifically British idioms—
It's raining, it's pouring, continues
The old man is snoring;
He hit his head on the back of the bed
and couldn't get up in the morning.
In my part of the world, it’s;
“It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The old man is snoring.
Bumped his head when he went to bed,
and he couldn’t get up in the morning.”
I get the feeling that the purpose with which this thread was started—as a place for non-British shipmates to ask British shipmates about the meaning of specifically British idioms—
It's raining, it's pouring, continues
The old man is snoring;
He hit his head on the back of the bed
and couldn't get up in the morning.
In my part of the world, it’s;
“It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The old man is snoring.
Bumped his head when he went to bed,
and he couldn’t get up in the morning.”
There will be minor variations on both sides of the Pond.
For instance, where I grew up it went, '... He went to bed and he bumped his head, and he couldn't get up in the morning.'
What is surprising perhaps isn't the similarities but how minor the differences are given time, distance etc.
I think we need to establish which phrases or terms are actually British idioms. That particular rhyme seems to be current on both sides of the Atlantic.
There's nothing specifically British about it, not like the way that a term like 'loo' doesn't appear to have crossed the Atlantic.
Some of the regional idioms we are discussing are found in particular British counties, towns or cities and a good few are new on me, so are highly unlikely to come to the attention of people in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean or anywhere else in the Anglophone world.
I think we need to establish which phrases or terms are actually British idioms. That particular rhyme seems to be current on both sides of the Atlantic.
Indeed. This thread does seem to have pretty quickly devolved into a lists of idioms that are often but not always, distinctly British, together with sharing, sometimes with little or no explanation, British slang and regional dialect. Perhaps it’s worth remembering why the thread was started:
This thread is intended for Americans to ask about idioms in British English: meanings and etymologies.
Of course, I doubt there was an intent to limit asking questions to American shipmates. But it does seem like the point was not just to randomly list idioms, but to provide a dedicated place for non-Brits who encounter a British idiom to ask what it means.
Comments
We used to tamp - bounce - balls
I think that's a lovely way of putting it; I can imagine my Sally Army friends arriving in Heaven in their uniform, and being given a new badge.
I first encountered the phrase in Terry Pratchett's Night Watch where it's got slightly more *active* connotations, and so comes across to me a bit sinister.
So it does! Nice one...
An extreme reaction, with a history behind it, but that's what happens with one's native language.
@Baptist Trainfan - 'laid aside on beds of sickness' and 'travelling mercies' were very much Brethren phrases as I recall. I don't remember 'journeying mercies' @Gracious Rebel.
@Nick Tamen I wouldn't be at all surprised to find similar idioms in Baptist, 'Bible-churches' and the like in the Southern States to what we might hear in 'non-conformist' churches here.
Moody and Sankey, DL Moody and similar figures exerted a strong influence here.
The transatlantic links continued after US independence of course. Heck, hereabouts the first British 'camp meetings' took place in the early 1800s modelled on the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky.
Oh yes, 'tamping down' @Priscilla I remember that one. As well as 'raining pouring'
If we’re onto Wenglish then there are phrases like, 'Whose coat is that jacket?'
As in its longer version, 'Whose coat is that jacket hanging on the door by there?'
Not to mention, 'Where to is it?' or 'Where by is it?' or 'Where by is that too?'
'Over by here,' or 'Over by there' also.
When I first lived away from Sputh Wales people often remarked how I would put 'is it?' or 'isn't it?' at the end of sentences.
'Do you want this chair moving by there, is it?'
'Off to town now, is it?'
'In Treorchy now isn't it, they used to ...'
Or 'good job' used in an ironic way.
'It's a good job that ladders not going to fall over ...' when it clearly was about to do that.
Or even in response to a preposterous suggestion, 'Oh aye, good job mind ...' with the sense of 'chance would be a fine thing.'
I doarn say things like ah, not no more.
Sadly.
There's a shame, mind.
I wonder whether they still say it?
"Affa nae weel" - seriously ill.
'Ken Aggie?'
'Aye.'
'Ken Aggie's man?'
'Aye.'
'Ken fush?' (fish)
'Aye.'
'He disnae like it.'
Or, 'Went to Gloucester once. Didn't like her.'
'Her' pronounced with a burr on the 'r'.
My brother worked with some tradesmen from Bristol once, 'sparkies' and 'chippies' and such (electricians and joiners).
They would say things like, 'Pass he to I,' for 'Pass it to me.'
In South Wales, which has plenty of English West Country borrowings in its 'Wenglish' dialect, it was quite common to hear 'he' or 'him' for inanimate objects.
'Pass that spanner belonging to me. I could do with 'im now just.'
I remember playing table-skittles in an unspoilt old-fashioned pub in Ledbury when one of the locals offered to 'take on' the group of students working on the fruit farms during the summer.
'I stick you lot. I take you lot on. ... I knocked down three buggerrrs. 'E knocked down two buggerrrs ...'
That's where I overheard a memorable Herefordshire conversation.
Husband (to a group of friends): 'E sufferrred. 'E sufferrred before 'e died.
Wife: 'E was the only man as I know, everr tried t'cure 'eart attack with Vick ...'
'Kick a bo' again-a wo' an' yed it till it bosts.'
'Ow do?'
I once quoted that to an old Aberdonian friend who had just had quite serious surgery. She laughed so much that she pulled some stitches. Her husband then quoted Shakespeare on the origin of laughing until you are in stitches (something else I haven't heard for a while).
The Norn Irland version has 'see' for 'ken'
See me?
See my man?
See cheese?
He hates it.
Positional - 'forenenst' for in front of: 'beyont' for the far side of.
Apparently in Nottingham pavements used to be corsas and horses bobos, but I’m not sure I’ve actually ever heard anyone say that.
My grandmother was an East Ender with an accent straight out of old musical songs. If you took a tumble you went arse over tit.
@Diomedes - interesting. Frome used to have a rough reputation but now it's been transformed by an influx of North London Guardianistas and arty types.
It's an interesting town. You still get some colourful Somerset expressions round there, but beware of 'Mummerset', the West Country equivalent of 'Mockney'.
Rather like the way the esteemed DJ John Peel used to affect a Scouse accent despite growing up miles from Liverpool.
@Firenze- and there was me thinking my friend had actually overheard that ...
'Black as Dick's hat-band' was a phrase in Mrs Signaller's West Lancashire family. No-one knew where it came from.
I've not come across it in the various other places I have lived - I wonder how it came to be part of the local vocabulary both where I heard it and where Sarasa lives.
They are quite a distance apart.
I also moved from Essex to Nottingham and discovered the word mardy on arrival which I love. I think it started off as referring to a baby who was grumpy (teething/hungry/needing a nappy change/anything else that upsets every baby there has ever been) but the word then transferred to describing anyone who was grumbling, especially if they were moaning about nothing. My favourite is the person who "ate a big slab of mardy pie".
I always thought the tennis player Mardy Fish sounds like the successor to Angry Birds.
Also, of any anticipated row - 'there'll be wigs on the green'.
A phrase for a bowlegged person was "He couldn't stop a pig in a ginnel!"
@Priscilla - don't you mean 'gwllies' pronounced 'gullies'?
Or more precisely with a long 'u' or an 'oo' sound as in 'book'.*
A 'w' in Welsh is pronounced 'oo'.
*I mean the Southern English pronunciation of 'book' or 'cook'.
Here in the north-west it's 'boook' or 'coook'.
'Mardy' can be heard in Sheffield too.
Snicket (Yorkshire)
Gunnel (variation of ginnel)
Jitty (Midlands)
Jetty (Derbyshire/Notts)
Twitchel / Twitchell (Nottinghamshire)
Chare (North East England)
Close (Scotland/Ireland)
Wynd (Scotland)
Passage or passageway (colloquial, especially “down the passage”)
Entry (Northern England)
Back entry (regional)
Cut-through (informal)
Twitten in Sussex.
Spelt jetty, but pronounced jitty, (Northampton)
Oddly, I seem to have always known that even before I moved to the south west. There are two rivers that are the Frome, also pronounced the same way, both of which flow into the Bristol Avon, one from the south between Bradford-on-Avon and Bath and the other from the north in central Bristol.
Frome, the town, was always supposed to be an up and coming place about to be discovered by those that know these things, even 50 years ago, but somehow that never seems to have happened.
@Gamma Gamaliel I'm slightly puzzled and intrigued by your, A pedantic bit of me screams 'didn't that ought to be 'mind'st ta'?', but I suppose it isn't and is that why it sticks in the memory?
That's another one from my past (in the West Midlands), where we knew it as "black at the back of Bill's mother's" when the skies were heavy with imminent rain.
I used to think "Bill" meant my (favourite) Uncle Bill, so those black clouds were behind my grandma's house.
The old man is snoring;
He hit his head on the back of the bed
and couldn't get up in the morning.
Another from the Midlands:
Going round the Wrekin = going the long way round to get
somewhere.
It can be seen from Shropshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, The Black Country and Birmingham, and the phrase "all round the Wrekin" is found in all these places.
"It's lookin' like rain over Will's mother's". That was a long time ago in Hertfordshire. But it was always Will, not Bill!
I’m used to gunnels and snickets; in Shrewsbury they’re “shuts”.
I’ve heard “all round the Wrekin” in rural Shropshire and in West Bromwich.
When were you there? I'm going back a fair bit.
'All around the Wrekin,' was common in South Wales when I was growing up, but then there were significant numbers of people from the West Midlands who moved to our town to work in vehicle brake and gear factories during the War.
“It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The old man is snoring.
Bumped his head when he went to bed,
and he couldn’t get up in the morning.”
There will be minor variations on both sides of the Pond.
For instance, where I grew up it went, '... He went to bed and he bumped his head, and he couldn't get up in the morning.'
What is surprising perhaps isn't the similarities but how minor the differences are given time, distance etc.
I think we need to establish which phrases or terms are actually British idioms. That particular rhyme seems to be current on both sides of the Atlantic.
There's nothing specifically British about it, not like the way that a term like 'loo' doesn't appear to have crossed the Atlantic.
Some of the regional idioms we are discussing are found in particular British counties, towns or cities and a good few are new on me, so are highly unlikely to come to the attention of people in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean or anywhere else in the Anglophone world.
Of course, I doubt there was an intent to limit asking questions to American shipmates. But it does seem like the point was not just to randomly list idioms, but to provide a dedicated place for non-Brits who encounter a British idiom to ask what it means.