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The meaning of (what sounds lile) 'oil-tot' ?

LaytonLily

knowlegable brummie
My mother used to say something which sounded like 'oil-tot', used for example in : 'Jimmy is in his oil-tot playing in that water'. So it meant something like a person really enjoying what they were doing. I have never heard it used by anyone else or anywhere else and have often wondered what word it was ! I guess it's derivation is a French word or something brought back to GB by soldiers returning from the 1st WW.
 
Yes, I've heard that phrase when I was a child, I don't know where it comes from.
I think it may have been mentioned on another thread here - possibly the Brummie Sayings one.
 
My Mother used to say that!
I've no idea what it meant except being happy, or suited to whatever they were doing.
rosie.
 
our mom used that saying all her life... she passed away in 2009 and i still use it now...
 
Not heard that in years! This explanation makes sense, could be biblical ....


"In his oil tot"
used in Birmingham/Black country to denote being in his element/happy. Origin not known but may refer back to biblical expression "my cup (of oil) runneth over".

Viv.
 
Found this in a list of Black Country expressions. Dave.


29. Oil tot is a phrase for when someone feels satisfied and happy as in "I’m in my oil tot." It dates from the days when working men would have a tot of olive oil before drinking beer, in the belief that it would line their stomachs and stop them getting very drunk.
 
Farmerdave
I'm a bit dubious about that explanation. Can accept that they might have lined their stomachs with oil, but would not have thought olive oil very easily available
 
I think this is one of those sayings that everyone has an explanation for, the trouble being they are all different.
 
I go with Mikejee on this one. Olive oil, until folks like Fanny Craddock popularised it for cooking, was usually only bought in very small quantities. bought for medicinal use and usually obtained from a chemist shop.

There were those who bought larger quantities, specifically for cooking, but they were generally either foreign born or had lived abroad where olove oil was a common culinary product.

Given the industrial heritage of Birmingham and The Black Country maybe its origin could lie in the oil used to lubricate the moving parts of machinery?
 
I think that this was where the expression, "Well Oiled" evolved from. Meaning drunk, which ties in well with the example given by "farmerdave"
 
I go with Mikejee on this one. Olive oil, until folks like Fanny Craddock popularised it for cooking, was usually only bought in very small quantities. bought for medicinal use and usually obtained from a chemist shop.

There were those who bought larger quantities, specifically for cooking, but they were generally either foreign born or had lived abroad where olove oil was a common culinary product.

Given the industrial heritage of Birmingham and The Black Country maybe its origin could lie in the oil used to lubricate the moving parts of machinery?

I could certainly go with this, there were lots of machines that had to be maintained and oiled, if not, it would make a hell of a lot of people very unhappy

Oil.jpg
 
Ar I say oil-tot, picked it up from me ol’ man, and use it to mean happy, over the moon, equivalent to ‘in your element’. Apparently, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this latter phrase is to do with one of the ‘four elements’, though “chiefly of air and water”, so means the surroundings in which you might feel at home, which I would say is just the same as being in yer oil-tot!

Although there are instances of words and phrases coming back to Blighty with tommies from the trenches of the First World War, such as ‘san fairy ann’, I ’en’t come across this as an explanation for oil-tot meself. Though there plenty of words from military slang enterin’ common parlance, such as doolally.

The bit about “working men would have a tot of olive oil before drinking beer, in the belief that it would line their stomachs and stop them getting very drunk” actually comes from a little book called Aware Din Urea: A Second Book of Brum by a fella called Ray Tennant, which came out in 1983.

In this, against “in ’is oil-tot”, Mr Tennant says “Used of someone who is cheerful and contented in what he is doing. Probably from the old habit of a worker drinking a tot of olive oil on payday to line his stomach before going out drinking supposedly to stave off getting too drunk.”

I ’ave t’say I’m with Mike on this one, and I think the story ’ere is rather unlikely. There’s obviously a link with drinking in phrases like ‘well oiled’ and ‘on the oil’, meaning kaylied and on the booze respectively, but that dun’t mean they’re directly linked to oil-tot, especially as in Mr Tennant’s explanation the oil is actually preventative and s’posed to help stop ya gettin’ too oiled!

Mind, the word tot has boozey connotations an’ all. When I was on the Post in Brummagem, some twenty years ago now, there was a chap whose nick-name was ‘Ted the Tot’. Good old Ted, bless ’im, was very much ‘in ’is element’ going over the Craven Arms, which was the nearest boozer to the sorting office, on the corner of Blucher Street and Upper Gough Street, for a few bevvies!

I ’en’t never ’eard the one about oil-tot comin’ from the biblical expression “my cup (of oil) runneth over”, and ’ave t’say I think the link ’ere a bit tenuous. Meself, I reckon Alan (Radiorails) might be on t’summut when he talks about a possible origin being “in the oil used to lubricate the moving parts of machinery”, though maybe, sadly, by now we’ll never find out exactly where this distinctively Brummagem and Black Country sayin’ comes from.

Anyroad up, I still use it on a regular basis meself, though the first time I said it t’the wife she den’t ’ave a clue what I was blinkin’ well on about!!!
 
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My nan would say that if someone had drunk a lot of beer but appeared to be sober He must have hollow legs
I was brought up to believe that anyone with "'Oller legs" was a greedy person , whether it was drink or food that was consumed. It was a phrase used by both my Grans when I was young and often directed to us younger kids when we went for Sunday dinner and were asked if we wanted more.

"In his oil tot" was a common expression, still used today in our family, to express someone's happiness in a situation. Not living in Brum nowadays it's not a phrase I have ever come across here in the North East.
 
My nan used to say oil tot but I never knew the origin of it and still don't.
 
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My brother when looking at an obese person would say, "It always amazes me how much some people can pack inside one skin."
 
When I worked at Marsh & Baxters people would say He's in his oil tot, he's as happy as a Pig in ----
Sorry about that.But that's what they would say.:yum:yum
 
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