learn something new
- Thread starter Jonnybmac
- Start date
Seeing russian text always makes me think of aliens.
Hate to poo poo a thread, but this is pretty much all rubbish. I studied much of this time period in my History degree, and also studied English Place names and common sayings, none of which feature here. Amusing, but nonetheless fictional. Also, a lot of what is written above simply makes no sense, if you use ya noggin!
I dispute that.
I'm old and feel no reason to 'learn something new every day'
What the hell are you trying to tell me?
Your list of facts is facile.
My grey matter is dandy thanks.
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I enjoyed it OP, cheers, though I am a fanatic for origins of phrases.
I'll add a couple that come to mind.
Pulling someones leg apparently comes from when public hangings took place. If a victim's neck was not broken, loved ones would pull on the leg to aid in a quicker asphyxiation. Or from street thieves who would pull on someones leg after tripping them up to hear if there were any coins in there pockets and hence the saying pull the other one.
Gone for a Burton, originated from WWII. Where if someone was injured and was sent back to Blighty they had been said to have gone for a drink, or a Burton. Which was a popular beer at the time.
I'll add a couple that come to mind.
Pulling someones leg apparently comes from when public hangings took place. If a victim's neck was not broken, loved ones would pull on the leg to aid in a quicker asphyxiation. Or from street thieves who would pull on someones leg after tripping them up to hear if there were any coins in there pockets and hence the saying pull the other one.
Gone for a Burton, originated from WWII. Where if someone was injured and was sent back to Blighty they had been said to have gone for a drink, or a Burton. Which was a popular beer at the time.
I disliked it for the same reason.
A good rule of thumb is to distrust any etymology you find online other than on specialised websites with either peer review or genuine experts (and preferably both). That's especially true when it comes to phrases rather than single words (those are generally more reliable because they're generally addressed by people with relevant expertise).
It's possible that some of what the OP said is partially true to some extent, and that's the best I can say about it. I didn't even read all of it because it irritated me enough before I got to the end.
EDIT: Well, I gritted my teeth and read through it all. I think that the only etymology in that list that might be true is "dirt poor", and I wouldn't bet on it.
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Oh well, more the fool me.
Maybe the OP can redeem himself by getting the real origins of these words/phrases, no matter how mundane in reality and really "learn something new" himself.
I was going to add the ideas of thresholds origin, though there seems to be no definitive route apart from the verb thresh, to tread. i.e. first place you tread in a house. Plus searching and trying to post on my phone is not fun.
I enjoyed that tbh. Shame it isn't true I'm just waiting for OP to research the true meanings for us all
I did think the ****ing in a pot was true though ?
It has some plausible elements. Urine was used commercially in the past. It was even taxed in some times and places. Public toilets have in the past been joking named after the Roman emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus, for example. He came to power with the economy in a right mess and needed to raise money every way he could - one way was to tax urine from public toilets, which was widely used in the laundry industry for bleaching. It was used for tanning leather, too, in many times and places. Maybe it still is, I don't know.
I doubt if it's the origin of the phrase, though. I'm thinking that "**** poor" is probably an example of a crude word used for emphasis.
**** poor is simply an example of using the slang for urine as an amplifier of the word poor, and is a lot more recent than people seem to think with the recorded use being in the 1940s.
Effectively it has nothing to do with the tanning industry as commercial tanning didn't use urine in the first place, that was only ever used by individual hunters in the absence of other preparations.