This thread is intended for Americans to ask about idioms in British English: meanings and etymologies. For Cockney rhyming slang, give us the whole rhyme.
To start with:
--- Bob's your uncle
--- toad in the hole
--- spotted dick
--- bubble and squeak
Comments
I work with an Aussie so I often learn Australian idioms, as well. Most of the British idioms I have learned are from classic murder mysteries.
1. It's OK, or all right.
2. Sausages in batter pudding
3. Suet pudding with lots of currants and raisins
4. Cooked cabbage fried with potatoes, and (occasionally) meat
Take a butcher's (butcher's hook = look) at Google for definitions, me old china (China plate = mate)!
Well, the first idiom derives from a time when a young and inexperienced man was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ( evivalent to governor/ viceroy). Turns out he was appointed by the then prime minister Lord Salisbury aka Robert Gascoyne Cecil, who was the young man's uncle. ' Bob's your uncle' is often joined with ' and Fanny's your aunt's, though I don't know why
Spotted dick was originally spotted dough. Given the many ways - ough can be pronounced in English, in some areas dough was pronounced closer to 'dock' as in the Irish 'lough' pronounced loch - a body of water. For some reason the spelling was changed not the pronunciation.
Baked/ steamed in a long cylindrical shape in a cotton cloth or on the sleeve of an old gentleman's shirts. The jam would often ooze out, and was known as dead man's arm or revered mother's leg
O! Jam Roly-Poly! A favourite Sunday dessert at a certain Tennis (IIRC) Club in Sheffield, some decades ago...my in-laws used to take Mrs BF and I there for lunch now and then...
Possibly, but I can remember when a Penny was all one needed to gain access to the cubicle, which would often be all got up regardless with Tiles, Lead Pipes, a Chain, Brass, Shiny Paper, no expense spared...
Us gents didn't have to spend a penny if we just needed a Jimmy (Jimmy Riddle = piddle). The facility was free...
https://theslangpodcast.com/what-does-bobs-your-uncle-and-fannys-your-aunt-mean-in-british-slang/
Garn 'ome, an' git frimed!
Gallus?
Glaikit; dreich; sleischter. That last has been spelt phonetically and IIRC was heard by my parents (Aberdeen & Peterhead) from an Edinburgh proff they were working under in Aberdeen...
Or come to that, galluses.
Of course I do - I was Being Naughty!
But seriously...
Shoogly, haar, peelie-wallie (Scots, not sure I spelt the last one right)
Petrichor*, snickelway, gate** (Yorkshire)
*has been borrowed into standard English but was originally a dialect word
** means 'street' in York
High streets in Suffolk are often Thoroughfares.
My Scottish wife-to-be got annoyed with me when I didn't understand what she meant by "snibbing" (= bolting) the door.
When I came up here from Essex, I learned that 'alleyways' were 'ginnels'. And the whole thing of placename-new(or old)-road was something new for me. But I guess this is dialect and not idiom.
Regarding rhyming slang - the only people using it when I was a 1980s teenager were slightly-posh-Essex-people-trying-to-look-like-they'd-done-more-than-pass-through-Stepney-East-on-the-train. Looking at you, Ian Dury. But yes, the 'innit bruv' thing has rolled over the 'awigh' ma'e' sound (sorry, saahnd) of my youth in a way I could never have seen coming. People spoke like me and my mates for tens and tens of miles around. The regional variety (Manchester-Bolton-Chorley or Manchester-Salford-Wigan(!)-Liverpool(!!)) up here was a big surprise.
Oh, and, 'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey'.
There's 'thrawn'. I'm not sure if I can define it precisely but I know exactly what it means. Perhaps 'miseryguts' comes close, but possibly both broader and more intense; beyond one's desire to reach. I'm thinking of a landlady in Edinburgh, yea these many years past.
Sleekit, dreich, bùrach (and my favourite derivative 'cluster bùrach').
Phinn.
I rather like the local habit of prefixing the names of supermarkets with "the," as in "I'm going the Asda."
An English friend asked me if I could explain what a hootenanny was
I explained it was like a shindig
but more like a hoedown.
That's when his face went cattywampus.
Could I ask why you felt the need to put "cuisine" in inverted commas there?
Whereas clearly it was a ceilidh.
Could I ask why you felt the need to put "cuisine" in inverted commas there?
Caissa: Keeping in the line with the old joke about the different national stereotypes you find in hell. ;^)
Nobody could who Thropp was.
We've had whole threads on regional dialect terms before now.
I could cite plenty of examples from my native South Wales, and not only those expressions popularised by Gavin & Stacey.
One I heard recently was, 'Wha' did yew 'ave nice for yewer dinner?'
I don't think I've heard 'raining pouring' in South Wales much recently but then up in Yorkshire it's increasingly rare to hear 'thee' and 'thou' ('tha') and expressions like 'Five and twenty past' for '25 past' or 'while' instead of 'until' or 'thissens' for 'yourselves' or ...
Back home in South Wales phrases like 'now in a minute' or 'again' meaning 'another time' still seem to be in circulation. I can't remember the last time I heard, 'There's lovely' though. Probably when I was a nipper or 'nowt but a bairn' as they might just possibly still say in Yorkshire.
Do they still say 'has to' up there? 'Hass to ...' As in, 'It has to rain later but then it'll clear up ...' or 'If tha wants to get the-ere you aff to turn left at bottom o't'road, then go straight on past poob, then you aff to turn right. Carry on to't'end and then tha hass to bear left past Co-Op until tha see 'ginnel on't' reet-hand side ...'
I'd be grateful if you'd either keep them to Hell where I can respond appropriately or keep your ignorant insults to yourself then.
rhyming slang is popular in Glasgow also with many borrowings from Cockney slang
jelly bean = the queen (monarch) tory rope = the pope
Bristols from Bristol city = titty
I'd not heard that before.
@Caissa, I find much traditional British food bland too, but it doesn't have to be that way. Some pubs and eateries do it well.
My mother mostly cooked traditional British food and her pastry was wonderful. So were her Welsh Cakes but everyone insisted their Mams' were the best.
She did over boil the veg though.
I'm partial to Wright's Pies and Staffordshire oatcakes around here and do enjoy a traditional 'full English' in a 'greasy spoon' or 'transport caff'.
'I am large, I contain multitudes' - or I would be if I ate that stuff all the time.
I'd like to think, to borrow and bend a phrase and to continue the poetic analogy, that I can eat with kings nor lose the common touch.
I'm equally at home with posh French cuisine as I am with fish and chips or with scotch eggs, pork pies and so on.
We could get onto regional British names for food - are they bread 'rolls' or 'cobs' or 'bread cakes' or 'baps' or ...
Everyone's mother boiled vegetables to death, it's what you did. And you only ever roasted potatoes, not parsnip, carrot, broccoli or cauliflower, all of which can be vastly improved thereby.
My mum's of the first generation under the patronage of St Delia so we were largely spared the over-boiled veg, not that it helped because I cordially loathe most vegetable regardless.