General Chat

TO CUT AND RUN -came from when a ship cut the anchor rope in order to escape quickly.

TO GET OUT OF THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BED - came from when it was a superstition that it was unlucky to put your left foot down on the ground first when getting out of bed.

TO LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG-buyers at English country fairs would be shown a sucking-pig which would be placed in a bag whilst the deal was made. When the buyer got home he would find his nice, fat pig had been substituted by a cat.

Saved By The Bell comes from the 17th century (apparently) to stop people being buried alive. A bell was attached to the coffin and if a person came to after burial they rang the bell and were saved. This was always supposing someone was wandering around in the cemetery at the time I suppose

Barb

Anymore?

NE fishermen particularly Northumberland did not like the word pigs and used the word ''guffies'' instead.

I was told that the phrase "As sick as a parrot" came from an incident in the early 20th Century.

Tottenham Hotspur went on a tour of Uraguay and Paraguay in 1908 or 09. They were ferried around the countries by a ship and when they left to return to England, the ship's captain presented them with a parrot as a keepsake.

The parrot lived happily at White Hart Lane until one day in 1919, when Tottenham were relegated from the first division and their bitter rivals Arsenal were promoted in their place. The parrot dropped dead on the day the announcement was made ...

we have in our possesion a suprise mug, a ceramic pint pot , with a ceramic frog inside supposedely to give hardened drinkers a shock so they would give up drink forever (fat chance) but a good idea

Thank you Kitty
Here is another one for you. They did not have hoovers back then. lol


The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The
wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

This is a good thread Ron............I can't stand stew, but I suppose true hunger meant less fussy eaters than we have today.

xx

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day
they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving left-overs in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old

I have a newspaper article in which my Great Grandmother recalled several examples of speech that were prevalent in the district (Wittersham Kent) when she was a child. (1840's)
She remembered hearing a man say, “They taters are lauible ornary,” meaning that the potatoes were inferior. Onions were often called qugvous and an interesting example was recalled of a man who, in telling a boy to keep off his garden, said, “You kip running crass and crass that I qugyou bed till I be sick o’ seeing on ye.” The Kentish word ‘elling’ was often used in connection to the night or weather and also to denote that the outlook was very gloomy. Black currants were called gazelles and were rather bigger and of a sharper flavour than those of the present day.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle,
and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Owlers
This is a term for smugglers used since medieval times in Kent. It is not known how the term is derived. It could be for one of three reasons:-

Because they worked at night.
Possibly because they used an owl's call to contact each other.
Or, a possible transposition of the word "wooller".

The export of wool from England was prohibited from medieval times to protect the weaving trade. However, the result was that as there was overproduction, the price for wool was too low for many farmers to make a decent profit. The answer was to smuggle the wool to the Continent where English wool was in great demand. Import customs duties were established originally in 1272 by Edward I to assist in paying for his wars against France and this meant that the smugglers now had a reason for starting a two way trade across the Channel.

A guy in England that was arrested for beating women with a stick. When the judge asked how many women he beat he said "More than *YOU* can shake a stick at

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out
for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

This is for historical facts and meanings to help others understand what sort of things use to go on. If you have any add and share them in here.