History of words...

[TnWatchdog]

CHARLEY HORSE Meaning: A muscle cramp.Origin: In 1640, Charles I of England expanded the London police force. The new recruits were nicknamed "Charleys." There wasn't enough money to provide the new police with horses so they patrolled on foot. They joked that their sore feet and legs came from riding "Charley's horse."


CAUGHT RED-HANDED Meaning: Caught in the act.Origin: For hundreds of years, stealing and butchering another person's livestock was a common crime. But it was hard to prove unless the thief was caught with a dead animal ... and blood on his hands.

 

[Galileo]

Middle Finger- A legend had it that the middle finger as a gesture originated from the Battle of Agincourt, fought between England and France in 1415, during the Hundred Years' War. According to the legend, French soldiers cut off the middle fingers of English archers, to prevent them from using the English longbow, which required the middle finger to operate. In an act of defiance, the English soldiers supposedly made the gesture with their middle fingers towards the French.[32] This, however, is also where the gesture of 'flicking the Vs' supposedly comes from, as the index and middle fingers are actually needed for the considerable force required to draw a longbow.

 

[TnWatchdog]

Kick the Bucket

This means “to die”. Many people consider the term to have come from a condemned man standing on an upturned bucket which was then kicked out from under his feet leaving him to hang, but there is no written evidence that this is the case. In fact, it is more likely from a different type of bucket entirely. In butchery, when a pig was slaughtered it would be hung from a piece of timber called the bucket beam. It is mostly likely that in his death throes, the pig’s feet would bang against the rail to which they were tied. Therefore, kicking the bucket was a term referring to the last actions of the pig before he finally died.

 

[TimeFlipper]

Up Yours...
This was originally used by Radio Amateurs back in the 1930s to ask the person they were transmitting to, to put more power into his transmitter as his signal was very weak..(this was in the day when only morse code was used for transmission, and even today modern speed typing uses lots of Radio Amateur abbreviated words)..

Obviously there are more usages of this expression today as an insult to another person, but when the British people first starting using it, it became a normal insult to mean....Up Yours, you are an idiot!

 

[TnWatchdog]

Keep me posted...
Origins: During the Colonial Era, if someone wanted to share news or information with the community, the person would post a note on a large wooden post. The wooden post usually was in a centralized area where people gathered for conversation or gossip. This is where the saying “keep me posted” originated from, because people literally had to nail it on a post.

Charlotte Lowe, History Fact-O-Pedia, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011, 8.

 

[TimeFlipper]

Im in the Pink..This was an expression used by the people who had not contracted the Black Death in the 17th century..
When somebody asked how are you and you replied, im in the pink, it meant the colour of your body was still normal (pink)..
Although mostly, this was an expression used by people of the UK....

 

[TnWatchdog]

Are you in the pink today TimeFlipper, wearing those pink knickerbockers? lol

 

[TimeFlipper]

Pleeeease Dawg, i have very modern day boxer shorts (blue) ..and thanks for reminding me about those lovely Knickerblocker Glories that are ice cream layers with fruit, served in a tall glass with a long spoon and are quintessentially English by origin

 

[TimeFlipper]

It takes a sprat to catch a mackerel...
This was a term used by anglers in the UK, to say what you need on your hook to catch a fish, However it has wider uses now like a term used for catching anything, even a girl lol ..a synonym of this would be, it takes a thief to catch a thief