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Give us yer donny

Not sure if this was ever used in Brum but I asked my old friend today if there was anything she needed, she replied "Just six penn'orth of god help me."
 
Way and road are the same and I have heard both anyway and any road. However I have heard 'Any road up' on Corry and assumed that it was a Northern expression.

You can also get 'No way' and 'No road' which I did hear many years ago in the Black Country

This on another forum is interesting
 
By grandmother regularly used "any road up" and she was born in Aston in the 1870s.
It seems a common expression in the Midlands and the North, and the Steve Gibbons Band even had an album with that title.

Maurice :cool:
 
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Way and road are the same and I have heard both anyway and any road. However I have heard 'Any road up' on Corry and assumed that it was a Northern expression.

You can also get 'No way' and 'No road' which I did hear many years ago in the Black Country

This on another forum is interesting
"Any road" was used in my family, but "no way" I think is pretty national and came into use in the Seventies.
 
When did we start calling Boot & Shoe repairs SNOBS

As a child was always told to take DADS boots to the SNOBS
 
Whilst I knew the Snob was a shoemaker, I have only once heard it spoken and that was in an early job I had soon after I left school when my boss came into the office and asked if there was a good snob in the area as he needed some shoes repairing. When I was in France I saw a men's clothes shop called Très Snob (Very Snob).
 
Most online dictionaries do not list snob as meaning shoemaker but do say the word is of unknown origin. However I have come across this on a website called etymonline.com:
snob (n.)
1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c. 1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and passed then into literary use, where by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" is by 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 the word had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste.
 
Most online dictionaries do not list snob as meaning shoemaker but do say the word is of unknown origin. However I have come across this on a website called etymonline.com:
snob (n.)
1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c. 1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and passed then into literary use, where by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" is by 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 the word had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste.

I never knew that!
Very interesting, thanks, as they say, you're never too old to learn something new!
 
I remember the saying "A job in the town" being used to describe something good or special. It probably came from the fact that if you worked in the city centre (always called "Town" in Brum) you were a bit "white collar" rather than getting dirty in a factory.
 
I remember the saying "A job in the town" being used to describe something good or special. It probably came from the fact that if you worked in the city centre (always called "Town" in Brum) you were a bit "white collar" rather than getting dirty in a factory.
gi as your donny
 
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At the risk of straying off topic I think a lot of pseudo french phrases were brought back with soldiers returning from the Great war. Plonk is one example (Vin Blanc), San Fairy Ann (Ca ne fait rien) is another. Those two phrases are known throughout the country so why particular ones such as Donny and Arley Barley are peculiar to Birmingham I have no idea.
My mother in law, who came from Middlesbrough, used to say "San Fairy Ann", so definitely not an expression unique to Birmingham - "donny", which I and my family still use, is a Brummie-only expression.
 
I still get funny looks when I say I've been all round the Wrekin as I've lived in Lancashire for the last 30 odd years. This thread has brought back to me all the Brummy sayings I grew up with and yes, we did call hands donnies, have arley barleys and 'san fairy ann' and 'any road up' were common expressions in our family.
 
I still get funny looks when I say I've been all round the Wrekin as I've lived in Lancashire for the last 30 odd years. This thread has brought back to me all the Brummy sayings I grew up with and yes, we did call hands donnies, have arley barleys and 'san fairy ann' and 'any road up' were common expressions in our family.
Welcome to the Forum dinah..............wonderful people and lots of very good information with a history lesson thrown in :)
 
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