Funny old sayings that give away (y)our age

It was a good episode, Soop lots of "badinage" with Victoria Coren giving as good as she got (but pretending to be shocked at times at Jimmy Carr)

Don't let Mr Soop laugh too hard at it, it will set his recovery back.

Thank you Elegran I will take a look. It's unbelievable how many meanings one little word can have.

feetlebaum I'm a former Wirral girl ( Seaside Scouser) it's definately a pan of scouse for me . I had heard of the Scandanavian connection and of course there was a huge influx of Irish immigrants to Liverpool who had their very own Irish stew. At home ours was always made with the cheapest cuts of lamb and must go veggies usually carrots, spuds, onion. The non meat version was called Blind Scouse.

vampirequeen, my dad told me that Yorkshire had as many acres as there were letters in the Bible.

@sook : "Where I live now lobby means a pan of stew."

Ah... would that be a link to the Liverpudlian 'pan of scouse' - scouse being from a Scandinavian word, 'lobskaus'? Forgive me if my spelling there is a bit how's yer father...

28 meanings of "jigger" as defined on GI - measuring device, handcar, sail, small weight, snooker rest, flea, prison cell, boot-sole polisher, odd-looking person, distillery, penis, cooper's knife, potter's wheel, back passage, lathe, women's coat, sieve, dancer, pulley, door, golf club, ouija board, policeman, vagina, thingummy.

Yes the episode is on i-Player, as "QI - Series J - 1. Jargon" with Victoria Coren, Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr (cheeky in this one but not as coarse as he sometimes can be) and Alan Davies.

Jiggery-pokery? Well, I'll be jiggered!

I wish now I had noted them all down. Will see if it is on I-Player.

Elegran said.

"Stephen Fry had sveral dozen meanings for jigger, some of them very odd."

My husband was a sailor back in the dim mists of time. He remembers walking through Singapore when a young lad came up to him and said 'Jigger jig my sister mister, only half a crown" He told the lad to bugger off, but later wished he'd given him the money to give his sister a break.

A jigger in East Africa was an insect that burrowed into one's toes!

Elegran I didn't watch QI will google jigger though just for interest.

Anagram There is a row of terraced houses in Port Sunlight Village (Wirral) named The Ginnel.

You must have been watching QI, sook. Stephen Fry had sveral dozen meanings for jigger, some of them very odd.

That's a ginnel!

My mum and nan called knickers drawers.

Our small entrance hall was called a lobby. Where I live now lobby means a pan of stew.

A jigger was an alleyway between back to back houses, also referred to as an entry.

Yorkshire is a big county....probably cos it's God's own... and language seems to have developed differently depending on where you live. I'm from East Yorkshire lass married to a West Yorkshire lad (a Wessie) and sometimes we seem to speak different languages. For example he calls a breadcake a teacake which is odd because to me a teacake is sweeter and has raisins in it.

I show my age when I talk about baps. These are small breadcakes to me but apparently the word has a whole different meaning more in line with the Kate topless issue

I grew up in Yorkshire and never heard of 'sandshoes' as a child . We always called them 'pumps ' or P.E. shoes.

feetlebaum You are right. I was wrong. It was 1952-ish.

The Big Smog was in the early Fifties - '52 I think. It lasted for a week - and thousands died as a result of it...

An expression of my mother's that I liked - of someone who would be shocked by something - 'Ooh! She'll have a pink fit with her leg up...'

Smog! I was at school in early 60s when the town was enveloped in thick yellow-tinged smog. Traffic stopped. We girls had to walk about 4 miles home. I remember how quiet, and eerie, and other-worldly the town seemed.

The peasoupers in London were also known as London particulars. Then, going full circle, someone invented a recipe called London Particular which is a pea soup with pig's trotters.

ella used to tie a scarf around my face which was soaking wet by the time you got home...mum wanted me to wear a balaclava,which I refused ,I realised when she wanted me to wear it through the summer too,that she did have a problem with me being an ugly child,and the peasoupers was a good excuse to keep me undercover

Last night's post lost so backtracking!
My Mum had aspirations to be middle class so said plimsols as we did until we started school then they were pumps.
She also said : 'Don't stare, Mrs........ is not all there'. That meant we stared all the more to see which bits were missing!

Then when, when you got home you had a smoggy face with smudges around your nose!

I remember walking the four miles home from work, having been allowed to leave at 3pm because of pea souper fog in the 60s. There was no transport. I didn't see a soul, and it was eerily quiet. I had to retrace my steps several times when I missed turnings, and to this day I still don't know how I got home in one piece.

"Not the full shilling" of someone about whom it is now said "one sandwich short of a picnic."

anno, my Dundonian mother-in-law's posh aunt infused tea too. We just used to mek it.

My dad had a motor bike and side car...before we went up market and got a Robin Reliant....when I got to about 12 I was allowed to ride pillion to give enough room to my mum and little brother,( thinking of that scene in "on The buses" when Olive in the sidecar parts company with her the old man driving the bike...when asked dad would say oh yes I have a BSA dubblerdolt motor bike it wasn't until many years later I found out a dubblerdolt motorbike and sidecar was in fact a double adult that flipping reliant robin ended up catching alight from the floorboards but that is another story altogether