Taking the Piss

BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
In the UK 'piss' can mean 100 things.

Can we think of them all?

Comments

  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Piss off... can mean 2 things.. either 'go away' or you can't believe something .. all depends on tone and context.
  • SipechSipech Shipmate
    Urine
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Sipech wrote: »
    Urine

    😛
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Booze
  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    I don't know if this is true in the UK but in the US to be pissed or pissed off can be to be angry.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Back home, rain had no manners - it was either spitting or pissing.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    NicoleMR wrote: »
    I don't know if this is true in the UK but in the US to be pissed or pissed off can be to be angry.

    Pissed off is angry but merely pissed is inebriated in UK usage.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    As it is in Oz ( inebriated that is); “on the piss=on the way to inebriation)
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    They just pissed it up the wall = wasted it, usually money.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Yep, same here
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    It’s like cat’s piss = a very weak cup of tea.
  • Or gnat's piss, for beer.
  • To "engage in a pissing contest" is to argue with someone, with each participant trying to prove he's better than the other.

    To say that something is "worth less than a cup of cold piss" is to say it's absolutely worthless.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Piss-up=drinking session, usually at a pub
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Also: piss weak=gutless
  • Sojourner wrote: »
    Also: piss weak=gutless
    In the States is “piss-poor” means of very low quality or extremely impoverished.



  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    edited August 18
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Also: piss weak=gutless
    In the States is “piss-poor” means of very low quality or extremely impoverished.

    As in the saying "Perfect Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance".

    (I may be misremembering or miscounting the Ps but the gist is there)
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Also: piss weak=gutless
    In the States is “piss-poor” means of very low quality or extremely impoverished.

    As in the saying "Perfect Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance".

    (I may be misremembering or miscounting the Ps but the gist is there)

    It's not true. Piss-poor planning guarantees piss-poor performance but it doesn't automatically follow the other way
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Also: piss weak=gutless
    In the States is “piss-poor” means of very low quality or extremely impoverished.

    As in the saying "Perfect Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance".

    (I may be misremembering or miscounting the Ps but the gist is there)

    It's not true. Piss-poor planning guarantees piss-poor performance but it doesn't automatically follow the other way

    I had the thought as I wrote it down but the saying still exists. I'd also argue that bumbling through half-arsed often produces surprisingly good results.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    'Piss or get off the pot' for procrastination or general uselessness.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    "He's as full of wind and piss as the minister's cat" - describes someone who talks a lot but says nothing of value.
  • US. To be pissed off is to be angry.
  • "Pissing in the wind" means that what you are doing will produce no results.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Piss-up=drinking session, usually at a pub

    "Couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery" = totally incompetent.
  • That one has Biblical authority from Proverbs 32 that I may have quoted before: "He that pisseth into the wind shall find few to stand beside him".

    Once when working in Montreal I heard a serious irritation being described as 'un pissoff majeur' - a phrase that I've often found to be quite useful.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    The narrator in Muriel Spark's A Far Cry from Kensington knows a pretentious literary man whom she calls a pisseur de copie.
  • TinaTina Shipmate Posts: 49
    My dad had an expression for that situation where someone looks very busy but is achieving very little:

    'Pissing about like a pox-doctor's clerk'
  • "Pissing in the wind" means that what you are doing will produce no results.
    Or that what you’re doing will only blow back on you.


  • RockyRogerRockyRoger Shipmate
    edited August 18
    Have we had the phrases, 'He's all piss and wind', 'Stop pissing about' and, 'I'm pissed if I know'?
  • A particularly nasty, obnoxious person is a "pisser."
  • SpikeSpike Ecclesiantics & MW Host, Admin Emeritus
    Piss-up = a heavy drinking session
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Piss artist - habitual drunk.
  • Have we had 'all piss and vinegar' - meaning having an excess of energy?
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    “Lanky as a streak of piss” = very thin
    “Hasn’t a pot to piss in” = very poor

    (There is a certain Texan who posts reviews of UK food and historic sites on Facebook who was also discussing the various meanings of “piss” earlier today - is this where this thread originated, or is it sheer coincidence?)
  • SipechSipech Shipmate
    Nenya wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Piss-up=drinking session, usually at a pub

    "Couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery" = totally incompetent.

    I knew some guys at university who lived up to that saying. They organised an annual trip to the Black Sheep brewery under the thin guise of the Cheese Society visiting Wensleydale. Every year, they'd get banned after causing carnage, but every year, they booked under different names and addresses, until 2004 (if I recall correctly) they slipped up and the brewery cottoned onto them.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    "He's as full of wind and piss as the minister's cat" - describes someone who talks a lot but says nothing of value.

    A local variant: full of piss and wind like the barber’s cat

  • RockyRogerRockyRoger Shipmate
    Not quite a tangent. Late one night a fella shuffles up to a stranded motorist on the side of the road. "Washa madder?" he asks. "Piston broke" the motorist explains. The fella nods and shuffles off, "Sho am I", he replies.
  • SipechSipech Shipmate
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    Not quite a tangent. Late one night a fella shuffles up to a stranded motorist on the side of the road. "Washa madder?" he asks. "Piston broke" the motorist explains. The fella nods and shuffles off, "Sho am I", he replies.

    I confess it took me two readings before I got it. A joke very much in the Norfolk & Whey style.
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Purgatory Host, Circus Host
    There's also Lyndon Johnson's line about being inside the tent pissing out.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    Full of piss and vinegar = feisty, energetic
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Purgatory Host, Circus Host
    If I may extend this to other languages, the South West of France has the expression "pleut comme vache qui pisse" (raining like pissing cow).
  • The Romans said it in Latin: Non valet lotium suum, meaning He's not worth his own piss.
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