Wasn't 'Wakey! Wakey!' Arthur Askey's catchphrase?'
These days catchphrases from 'The Fast Show' often fall on deaf ears.
I was heartened though, when a young Millenial knew who 'Swiss Tony' was when I observed that the lift (escalator) he kindly summoned for a friend on a mobility scooter had a voice recording that sounded just like 'The Fast Show' character.
Summoning a lift is like making love to a beautiful woman.
Something I remember every time I see a contestant on a TV game show, or any celebrity, expressing surprise, horror, amusement or any kind of emotion. They seem to think it necessary for the mouth to gape open to the widest extent. No dear, I don't want to see the back of your tonsils.
Egg custard tart in my mother's family was known as donkey's nod. Apparently because of an exchange that once took place (before I was born) something like this
Mother ...'do you want a piece of this?'
Father ....(no reply but nods head)
Mother.... 'Donkey's Nod' (this must be an archaic saying expressing annoyance at someone just nodding a response)
Younger brother 'Can I have some of that Donkeys Nod too please'
I was reminded of my gran the other day, telling me off for saying "I just thought...."
She'd say: "You know what Thought did - followed the dustcart and thought it was a wedding!"
I was reminded of my gran the other day, telling me off for saying "I just thought...."
She'd say: "You know what Thought did - followed the dustcart and thought it was a wedding!"
I'm so glad that one isn't just my family! It completely bemuses the Knotweed to this day.
I was reminded of my gran the other day, telling me off for saying "I just thought...."
She'd say: "You know what Thought did - followed the dustcart and thought it was a wedding!"
I still use that one.
"She", through my childhood, was the cat's mother.
I was reminded of my gran the other day, telling me off for saying "I just thought...."
She'd say: "You know what Thought did - followed the dustcart and thought it was a wedding!"
I was reminded of my gran the other day, telling me off for saying "I just thought...."
She'd say: "You know what Thought did - followed the dustcart and thought it was a wedding!"
I do use the phrase five & twenty past (or five & twenty to) but without reference to the hour.
This would be when something happens at five & twenty past every hour, or if speaking about a specific hour that all parties are aware of. Otherwise it is twenty-five past/to whatever.
'Now, of my threescore years and ten' . . . (Housman). Not about, mind you, the 'loveliest tree' but the 'loveliest of trees'.
I used the same formation in my parody:
'I've used up threescore years and ten,
I won't be seeing them again,
And through my self-inflicted ills
I've lost those Blue Remembered Hills.
I now forget my yellow pills.
What was interesting (or confusing) was when the 24-hour clock came in for trains etc.
If you enquired about a service and were told it departed at "Twenty-two-ten", was that in fact 22:10 or 9:40? The speech inflection would have helped, I guess.
Not quite the same, though, is it? “Four score and seven” is the equivalent of “eighty and seven” rather than “seven-and-eighty.” Similar, but a little different.
I think it is not uncommon as an archaic usage. So often also a more rural usage.
In my experience in the American South, it’s completely confined to older writings and poetic usage—notably the aforementioned-mentioned “four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”
What was interesting (or confusing) was when the 24-hour clock came in for trains etc.
If you enquired about a service and were told it departed at "Twenty-two-ten", was that in fact 22:10 or 9:40? The speech inflection would have helped, I guess.
I remember once visiting family in Surrey when I was a child. The Green Line coach back to London was route 711. My mum rang the bus station to ask when the seven-eleven left, and the person in the phone replied that there wasn’t one at that time as they left at half past the hour
I found myself thinking, ‘That’s all my eye and Betty Martin” the other day. I don’t think I’ve heard that expression for years.
MMM
Not one I have ever used nor, I think, have ever actually heard it in normal conversation but it is familiar, so maybe from a novel or TV. I have known it as 'something older people used to say' for at least 40 years.
What was interesting (or confusing) was when the 24-hour clock came in for trains etc.
If you enquired about a service and were told it departed at "Twenty-two-ten", was that in fact 22:10 or 9:40? The speech inflection would have helped, I guess.
I remember once visiting family in Surrey when I was a child. The Green Line coach back to London was route 711. My mum rang the bus station to ask when the seven-eleven left, and the person in the phone replied that there wasn’t one at that time as they left at half past the hour
Gosh - a real person in a bus station who answered the phone? That in itself dates you!!!
Just in case you didn't know, that's a corruption of the first four words of a Latin prayer to Saint Martin: Ah mihi , Beate Martin, literally "Ah to me, Blessed Martin, grant . . . ."
Not dissimilar to the better known "Hocus pocus" for Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body . . .
On my way to church today, I was listening to a report on how teens, now tweens are saying 6-7. No one seems to know what it means. Probably nothing. People don't know where it comes from. Some say it is from basketball. Kids will shout out 6-7 in class. Some teachers have actually banned the phrase, others have given in to it. After church, today. I approached a tween and asked her what it meant. She said it was a basketball term and walked away. A retired teacher overhead the conversation. We started talking about catchwords we grew up with. For instance, "Groovy or Groven" when I was a late teenager. He said when he started teaching, the catchphrase was "Tubular" referring to a wave that curls over a surfer as s/he is riding the wave. He thought it was odd because there is no ocean within 500 miles of the community, how kids were using it
On my way to church today, I was listening to a report on how teens, now tweens are saying 6-7. No one seems to know what it means. Probably nothing. People don't know where it comes from. Some say it is from basketball.
It’s from Skrilla’s drill rap song “Doot Doot (6 7)”:
“The way that switch brrt, I know he dyin' (oh my, oh my God)
6-7, I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip)
Skrrt, uh (bip, bip, bip)
I just bipped right on the highway”
And it’s not so much that no one knows what it means as that it doesn’t mean anything in particular. Even Skrilla has said he had no particular meaning in mind when he wrote “Doot Doot (6 7),” though there a various theories as to where he got it. And so it can mean whatever you want it to mean in a particular context, sort of like Gary Owens’ “insegrevious.” Or it can just be gibberish intended for humor and/or to make (older) people wonder.
On my way to church today, I was listening to a report on how teens, now tweens are saying 6-7. No one seems to know what it means. Probably nothing. People don't know where it comes from. Some say it is from basketball. Kids will shout out 6-7 in class. Some teachers have actually banned the phrase, others have given in to it.
Bless the little darlings, every generation the same, thinks that they are the first ever to invent their own private language or phrases with the intention of confusing and annoying the grown ups!
Perhaps it should be taken as 6 7s?
Then the proper response to anyone calling it out must be "The answer to life, the universe & everything", as the grown-ups would know.
Perhaps it should be taken as 6 7s?
Then the proper response to anyone calling it out must be "The answer to life, the universe & everything", as the grown-ups would know.
That was 42, but the question was "what do you get if you multiply six by nine?", not six by seven.
Perhaps it should be taken as 6 7s?
Then the proper response to anyone calling it out must be "The answer to life, the universe & everything", as the grown-ups would know.
That was 42, but the question was "what do you get if you multiply six by nine?", not six by seven.
IIRC you can get 42 by multiplying six by nine... in base 13. (Some years back a friend was very bored and worked it out!).
Perhaps it should be taken as 6 7s?
Then the proper response to anyone calling it out must be "The answer to life, the universe & everything", as the grown-ups would know.
That was 42, but the question was "what do you get if you multiply six by nine?", not six by seven.
IIRC you can get 42 by multiplying six by nine... in base 13. (Some years back a friend was very bored and worked it out!).
Was coincidence according to Adams. He just picked something that was nearly right.
Comments
It was how he introduced his Sunday lunchtime radio programme Billy Cotton's Band Show, very loudly
No, it was Billy Cotton
Summoning a lift is like making love to a beautiful woman.
Something I remember every time I see a contestant on a TV game show, or any celebrity, expressing surprise, horror, amusement or any kind of emotion. They seem to think it necessary for the mouth to gape open to the widest extent. No dear, I don't want to see the back of your tonsils.
Mother ...'do you want a piece of this?'
Father ....(no reply but nods head)
Mother.... 'Donkey's Nod' (this must be an archaic saying expressing annoyance at someone just nodding a response)
Younger brother 'Can I have some of that Donkeys Nod too please'
I loved the Golden Shot as a child. Although I should point out one does not fire any kind of bow. One shoots a bow, or looses the ammunition.
She'd say: "You know what Thought did - followed the dustcart and thought it was a wedding!"
I'm so glad that one isn't just my family! It completely bemuses the Knotweed to this day.
If I asked my grandmother what something unfamiliar was, I would be told it was "layers to catch meddlers"
Yep, Wait and See pudding here.
"She", through my childhood, was the cat's mother.
And on me.
Mrs Vole thinks it's a German construction -and gran's mother was German.
“Five and twenty” is indeed how 25 would be expressed in German.
Do you mean higher classes would say 'five and twenty'?
I've just thought of the nursery rhyme : four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
This would be when something happens at five & twenty past every hour, or if speaking about a specific hour that all parties are aware of. Otherwise it is twenty-five past/to whatever.
I used the same formation in my parody:
'I've used up threescore years and ten,
I won't be seeing them again,
And through my self-inflicted ills
I've lost those Blue Remembered Hills.
I now forget my yellow pills.
Works well in poetry!
If you enquired about a service and were told it departed at "Twenty-two-ten", was that in fact 22:10 or 9:40? The speech inflection would have helped, I guess.
In my experience in the American South, it’s completely confined to older writings and poetic usage—notably the aforementioned-mentioned “four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”
I remember once visiting family in Surrey when I was a child. The Green Line coach back to London was route 711. My mum rang the bus station to ask when the seven-eleven left, and the person in the phone replied that there wasn’t one at that time as they left at half past the hour
And I’m another who often uses “Five and twenty past/to” for times.
MMM
Gosh - a real person in a bus station who answered the phone? That in itself dates you!!!
Just in case you didn't know, that's a corruption of the first four words of a Latin prayer to Saint Martin: Ah mihi , Beate Martin, literally "Ah to me, Blessed Martin, grant . . . ."
Not dissimilar to the better known "Hocus pocus" for Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body . . .
“The way that switch brrt, I know he dyin' (oh my, oh my God)
6-7, I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip)
Skrrt, uh (bip, bip, bip)
I just bipped right on the highway”
And it’s not so much that no one knows what it means as that it doesn’t mean anything in particular. Even Skrilla has said he had no particular meaning in mind when he wrote “Doot Doot (6 7),” though there a various theories as to where he got it. And so it can mean whatever you want it to mean in a particular context, sort of like Gary Owens’ “insegrevious.” Or it can just be gibberish intended for humor and/or to make (older) people wonder.
When I was in the US in '71, I once stated that the time was "Five and Twenty to three", much to listener's amusement.
Bless the little darlings, every generation the same, thinks that they are the first ever to invent their own private language or phrases with the intention of confusing and annoying the grown ups!
Then the proper response to anyone calling it out must be "The answer to life, the universe & everything", as the grown-ups would know.
That was 42, but the question was "what do you get if you multiply six by nine?", not six by seven.
IIRC you can get 42 by multiplying six by nine... in base 13. (Some years back a friend was very bored and worked it out!).
Was coincidence according to Adams. He just picked something that was nearly right.