Chinny Reckon

[Floyd]

At my school it was just yeah chin, (either with, or more often without, the stroking of the actual chin).

Thinking about it though, don't most of us stroke the old chin when simply pondering something (or we certainly wouldn't think it odd if someone did do that, anyway).

I wonder how and why evolutionary traits (if it is indeed one) such as this, start in the first place.

 

[staticgirl]

In East Lincs we said 'chinny reckon' and 'Jimmy Hill' in the 80s but by the 90s we were saying "Billies!"

I came across it the other day in some juvenile creative writing I have kept to enjoyably cringe at every now and then.

 

[James_H]

I was wondering, does anyone have any idea where the phrase 'chinny reckon' comes from.

Apparently it comes from the very Germanic, older dialectal 'Ich ne reckon' ('I don't think so'). Though the sources for that online seem fairly circular so it might be a legend or false etymology in itself.

One example: https://metro.co.uk/2018/05/11/chinny-reckon-come-mean-7538824/

After that, I suppose all the Jimmy Hill/itchy beard stuff evolved naturally from the coincident sound of the word 'chin'. I also wonder if stroking one's chin to show disbelief might also originate from this Middle English phrase.

 

[Peripart]

Obviously not a Central midlands thing - I have no recollection of anything like this at all!

Well, I do recall it, so it did at least dip its toes in the Midlands in the 1970s.

 

[cycleboy2]

I never heard this as a child in the sixties/seventies in Bath but when I worked for a magazine publisher in the 1990s/2000s it came up in conversation with a few of my slightly younger colleagues who were kids around the eighties. I can't think where they were from, but I'm pretty sure they weren't local.

 

[Steev(still)]

South East. Near enough to the coast to get me feet wet. 1970s into 1980s.

"Jim-jim-jimmy!"
"Chinny reck-ON!"
Both accompanied by overplayed stroking of said chin.

Edit: my wife, who is thirteen years younger than me, looked at me with utter horror when I demonstrated and asked if she had the same thing at her school. "There really is something very wrong with you", she said.

However, I do remember being at university in the early nineties and doing it. But I reckon (or "reck-ON", obviously) that may have been at the very arse-end of its life as a meme.

 

[Godafoss30]

It also mutated at one point into French too, "Une barbe de Jimmy Hill"

 

[sdoig]

While in school a friend of mine came back from a holiday in England and announced that the English kids were stroking their chins and saying "Jimmy Hill!" when they though someone was bullshitting.

This we found hilarious and incorporated into conversation as much as possible. For all I know we were the only kids in Scotland to do this. We always said "Jimmy Hill" in an English accent when we did it. This would have been early to mid eighties.

Forfar, Scotland, here

Early nineties

We said "beardies!!" and stroked our chin when someone was talking shite

If someone was talking even more shite than normal it would be "Tutankhamen" with an extended chin stroke.

 

[escargot]

Forfar, Scotland, here

Early nineties

We said "beardies!!" and stroked our chin when someone was talking shite

If someone was talking even more shite than normal it would be "Tutankhamen" with an extended chin stroke.

When was that? The famous British Museum 1972 Tutankhamen exhibition sent the country Egyptology-mad and the image of Tutankhamen's splendid death mask, with the exaggeratedly long and stylised beard, was everywhere. RIPE for schoolboy jesting.

(Incidentally, the beard was accidentally snapped off during cleaning a few years ago and hastily glued back on.)

 

[AnonyJ]

Forfar, Scotland, here

Early nineties

We said "beardies!!" and stroked our chin when someone was talking shite

If someone was talking even more shite than normal it would be "Tutankhamen" with an extended chin stroke.

I think I may have the solution to the root of this one - Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer's (Swiss) The Ponderers from Vic Reeves Big Night Out who stroked their sizable chins, while pondering. It was hilarious at the time

I first heard 'chinning' as a term for punching someone in the face for the first time in NE England in 1989.

Being from the deep SW there were always some language issues!