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!!!