Origins Of Phrases (Notes; Queries; Oddities)

Trevp666 said:
And what about "Stone the Crows" as an expression of incredulity?
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Stone the ruddy crows! - That was my mother's favourite expression. Her parents were farmers (in Brixham) so she probably got the expression from them, bless her.
 
Robin said:
Stone the ruddy crows! - That was my mother's favourite expression. Her parents were farmers (in Brixham) so she probably got the expression from them, bless her.
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My dad, whose family worked on a farm in Sidford, also used Stone the Crows. My mum (a Londoner) never did. I used to wonder if it was WW1 slang that came back with his dad from France.
 
And the (now) rare phrase "You cow son!" or, in the accent "cahh-sahn!"
The last time I heard that was when my parents had unwrapped a parcel wrongly delivered to them. It turned out to be a rotary washing line. For some reason - they often did unexpectedly silly things - they got said item out of it's box. Suddenly (?) they realised they had to repack it. Whereupon my dad issued the question:
"Our we gonna git that cow son back in that bloody box?"
(How are we going to get that item back in the box?)
I may take the piss now and again of accents, but I grew up with my parents broad cockney and a childhood surrounded by South London* accents.

*"Sahf Lahndahn"
 
Stormkhan said:
And the (now) rare phrase "You cow son!" or, in the accent "cahh-sahn!"
The last time I heard that was when my parents had unwrapped a parcel wrongly delivered to them. It turned out to be a rotary washing line. For some reason - they often did unexpectedly silly things - they got said item out of it's box. Suddenly (?) they realised they had to repack it. Whereupon my dad issued the question:
"Our we gonna git that cow son back in that bloody box?"
(How are we going to get that item back in the box?)
I may take the piss now and again of accents, but I grew up with my parents broad cockney and a childhood surrounded by South London* accents.

*"Sahf Lahndahn"
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I wonder if 'cow son' is just a polite, well politer, version of 'whoreson'?
 
catseye said:
I wonder if 'cow son' is just a polite, well politer, version of 'whoreson'?
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I don't know, maybe. I've just put that expression into google with quotations - as in "cow son" - and (I haven't really got time to check it out now as I've got to turn my computer off) there was something in the search results that said:

"...The offending phrase was "cow son", an early 20th-century English version of the American "son of a bitch" used in Gertcha - proving that ..."
 
Robin said:
I don't know, maybe. I've just put that expression into google with quotations - as in "cow son" - and (I haven't really got time to check it out now as I've got to turn my computer off) there was something in the search results that said:

"...The offending phrase was "cow son", an early 20th-century English version of the American "son of a bitch" used in Gertcha - proving that ..."
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Yes - Cow Son featured in the lyrics to Gertcha by Chas & Dave. It was considered a bit rude by the Beeb who asked them to change it when performing it on tv. Needless to say Chas didn’t oblige.
 
Trevp666 said:
To be fair, we do have a lot of ways of describing rain in the UK.
Probably as many ways as the Inuit have of describing snow.
Pouring down, spitting, drizzling, mizzling, blinding down, pissing down, chucking it down, coming down in bucketfuls, raining stair-rods, tipping it down, etc etc
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I’d say all those have direct rain connections whereas Cats & Dogs seems to have no rain connection at all, which is what makes it a bit odd.

It’s a description which has no connection with the thing it’s describing.
 
Here's a Cheshire word - raunge. Or rawnge, not sure of the spelling. Going with raunge.

When people are sprawling out on the the sofa or in bed, they're raunging, especially if they're restless.
A partner might object to their taking up so much space and say 'Stop raunging!'

A baby who's sleeping soundly, all spread out across their mother's lap or their cot, is raunging. It is considered sweet for infants to raunge.

Sometimes when people are alert when dying they can't get comfortable and they will raunge.
In these particular circumstances, nurses will nod knowingly as the raunging is a certain sign of impending death.

I have seen this myself recently when sitting with a dying person. They were hardly able to move but asked several times to be repositioned because they couldn't get comfortable.
Had they been able, they'd've raunged.
 
Up for debate but some folks think it's related to a Mr Hiram Codd*. Formulated a soft drink and wasn't a success. Locals called the drink "Codd's Wallop" sarcastically, wallop being a term for beer.
However, 'cod' was also a Georgian slang meaning a hoax - you would be understood if you said "You are codding me - I aint no gull**!" Off-hand, I also recall one of the Dear Boss letters using the phrase "I aint codding".

* The real inventor of the bottle design called a Codd-neck.
** See earlier discussion.
 
Stormkhan said:
Up for debate but some folks think it's related to a Mr Hiram Codd*. Formulated a soft drink and wasn't a success. Locals called the drink "Codd's Wallop" sarcastically, wallop being a term for beer.
However, 'cod' was also a Georgian slang meaning a hoax - you would be understood if you said "You are codding me - I aint no gull**!" Off-hand, I also recall one of the Dear Boss letters using the phrase "I aint codding".

* The real inventor of the bottle design called a Codd-neck.
** See earlier discussion.
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I like to think it comes from testicle bag, as in to be walloped with a codpiece.
 
Stormkhan said:
Up for debate but some folks think it's related to a Mr Hiram Codd*. Formulated a soft drink and wasn't a success. Locals called the drink "Codd's Wallop" sarcastically, wallop being a term for beer.
However, 'cod' was also a Georgian slang meaning a hoax - you would be understood if you said "You are codding me - I aint no gull**!" Off-hand, I also recall one of the Dear Boss letters using the phrase "I aint codding".

* The real inventor of the bottle design called a Codd-neck.
** See earlier discussion.
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Codd sold his pop in glass bottles sealed by a glass marble in the tight-fitting neck. He also - smart man - sold a wooden device which the purchaser placed over the top of the bottle. When a smart wallop - ! - was delivered to said device, it knocked the marble down into the bottle, allowing the drink to be consumed.

200px-Image-Codd_bottle.jpg


DSC02198-1024x1024.jpg


As "wallop" was already a nickname for beer, "Codd's Wallop" became a term used for something that was as weak or inferior as lemonade was to beer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd-neck_bottle

maximus otter
 
Stormkhan said:
Might that be related to the word 'ranging' as in spreading over a range or area?
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Possibly, though it's about staying in one place but taking up a lot of space there.

t'internet reckons it means moving stuff around, especially tools, like a gearbox - you might raunge a gearstick around in a faulty car.
Not a use I've ever heard.

We do have graunch or graunche though, which is a grinding/crunching sound. Someone unfamiliar with a new car might graunche the gears a few times.
I know that sound well, and use the term in that connection. :(
 
I’ve just learned that the odd term ‘Curate's Egg’ as something which has both good & bad aspects comes from

A cartoon in Punch (1895) depicting a meek curate who, given a stale egg at the bishop's table, assures his host that ‘parts of it are excellent’.
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There may be the origin of a new and irritating phrase starting now.

"You're Joking." or "You're kidding me." have been around as long as I can remember; but lately we have the awful: "You're joking me.":yuck:
 
Tunn11 said:
There may be the origin of a new and irritating phrase starting now.

"You're Joking." or "You're kidding me." have been around as long as I can remember; but lately we have the awful: "You're joking me.":yuck:
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Although it does sound odd, if you insert the omitted words "with me" it makes sense. Even if I insert "with" into "You're kidding (with) me", I suspect that even this phrase might have originally been as such.
 
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