• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

sayings

Status
Not open for further replies.
My Dad would send me to to our local outdoor with a couple of bottles, & when they were filled, a paper strip would be placed across the stopper as a tamper proof seal. I used many of those tamper proof paper seals to decorate my bike!
 
Smudger said:
My Dad would send me to to our local outdoor with a couple of bottles, & when they were filled, a paper strip would be placed across the stopper as a tamper proof seal. I used many of those tamper proof paper seals to decorate my bike!
Click to expand...
:D
 
Also from the latest Black Country Magazine, “Wet your whistle.”

"Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used to whistle to get some service and "wet your whistle" is inspired by this practice."
 
Pedrocut said:
Also from the latest Black Country Magazine, “Wet your whistle.”

"Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used to whistle to get some service and "wet your whistle" is inspired by this practice."
Click to expand...
I recall a song, "I want to wet me Whistle"
 
Lady Penelope said:
My father always said 'A whistling woman and a cackling hen are neither use to God or men'. Wouldn't dare say it now would he!
Click to expand...
I heard this from a relative who was from Worcester and Malvern. A whistling Woman and a crowing hen. and then what you said. The same person's gran used to say her hair was as straight as a yard of pump water.
 
The whistling woman/cackling hen has some variations in its endings. Likewise it seems to be described as an old Irish saying, but Scottish is also mentioned. It seems to have been known in the United States as well - maybe from early settlers.
 
We've always used it as 'rubbish' when someone had said something unbelievable or stupid. My dad used to call beer 'a pint of wallop' but what that has to do with cod I don't know.
However, I googled it and apparently it appeared on Hancock's Half Hour in the 1950's and generally seems to have appeared then. Wiki seems to think it's 'cod' as in imitation and beer - so mock beer. It was originally one word - codswallop.
 
Pedro,

If wallop is beer then cod's wallop must be water? I queried the word "woke" the other day in the comments of a national newspaper, other than as the past participle of the word "wake", and got at least four different definitions. Slang, it most definitely is, and even dictionaries on the internet had different definitions. I prefer to steer clear of some of this slang as it can mean different things of different people!

Maurice :cool:
 
sospiri said:
Pedro,

If wallop is beer then cod's wallop must be water? I queried the word "woke" the other day in the comments of a national newspaper, other than as the past participle of the word "wake", and got at least four different definitions. Slang, it most definitely is, and even dictionaries on the internet had different definitions. I prefer to steer clear of some of this slang as it can mean different things of different people!

Maurice :cool:
Click to expand...
magic our Maurice:)
 
sospiri said:
Pedro,

If wallop is beer then cod's wallop must be water? I queried the word "woke" the other day in the comments of a national newspaper, other than as the past participle of the word "wake", and got at least four different definitions. Slang, it most definitely is, and even dictionaries on the internet had different definitions. I prefer to steer clear of some of this slang as it can mean different things of different people!

Maurice :cool:
Click to expand...

There are quite a few references to wallop as a pint of beer. But maybe I should stick with King Lear, or for more modern times a pint of Nelson Mandela.
 
So when I was told I was going to get a WALLOPING for being naughty my folks were going to give me a beer ?
How about a WALLOP brush a large paint brush used for wallpaper paste and for painting white wash on the inside of the out house.
 
Brewer's Phrase and Fable.

Wallop, to thrash.

Sir John Wallop, in the reign of Henry VIII was sent to Normandy to make reprisals, because the French fleet had burned Brighton. Sir John burned 21 towns and villages, demolished several harbours, and "walloped" the foe to his heart's content.
 
I met some girls once in Spain, from Nottingham. When they did something they thought was funny they shouted wallop! wallop! a bit like nudge nudge wink wink. I have never heard it like that before or since.
 
I just retorted under my breath "you can stick that up your pipe and smoke it," another of my Nan's sayings. I tend to use them of late I don't know why they just come out and my partner says whaaat? Not heard that since. like most of her sayings.
Though we had a very rude version at school. referring to the other end of you and flatulence. We must have been a lot of secretly foul mouthed little kids, most of us knew not to say anything in a teacher's ear shot. Or at home which I found out to my cost. "I don't know who you have been mixing with our Nico but if I hear anymore I am coming up that school with you."
 
you are really getting on my wick... and up my nose
.. You're lookin' a bit down in the mouth, Mr Barrowclough, anything the ... Godber: You've really got up my goat these past two weeks. Fletcher : Wrong Godber. I *get* your goat. I don't get up your goat. I get up your nose or on your wick.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top