Out-of-date sayings

My favourite is eleven pence to the bob. And from my youth referring to the local scrap dealer. It's like Jackie Pownalls in here (that was my bedroom)

As bent as a nine bob note...

Your family must have been rich Absent. It was 'two brass farthings' that we were short of.

I think there are only around 'half a dozen' of us who still say we 'got up wi' the Tannery Horn' but I expect that many Gransnetters will guess what it means.

Six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Not the full shilling.

Ne'er cast a clout til May be out [May meaning the hawthorn.]

That one's not going to get out of date, though, is it?

Brass monkeys and spoil the ship for a ha'aporth of tar are still in use but no one fires canon balls in modern wars and modern farmers don't treat their sheep with tar.

Bob a Job week.

See a penny, pick it up. All day long you'll have good luck.

(I wrote about this before on another thread because I said it at work and none of my young colleagues knew what I was on about): I doff my cap.

See a pin and pick it up all the day you'll have good luck. See a pin and let it lie means you'll tread on it barefoot.Daft as a brush still works. Not as daft as cabbage faced. Or pudding faced.

I think ana that 'Ne'er cast a clout til May be out' is already out of usage, since who [apart from us oldies] knows that a clout is a garment?Or that the may referred to means the hawthorn blossom and not the month?None of my own children or the DGC generation will know these sayings.

Gone for a Burton
Blot your copy book
Just the ticket

A bit off topic, but spotted a link to this on Mumsnet
sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Berliner-Lautarchiv-British-and-Commonwealth-recordings
They are sound recordings of British POWs in World War 1. See if you can understand your own regional accent...,

This place is like Paddy's Market My mum used to say when she was spring cleaning she was' putting doors out of windows'

Not short of a bob or two - an expression I still use when I think someone well off

"Haven't got two ha'pennies to rub together..."

Whoever needed to rub them together anyway?

I suspect feetle that they rubbed together in a purse or a pocket if anyone was lucky enough to have two.

In the family way.

Shotgun wedding – so they didn't have the children as bridesmaids when that expression was invented.

Got a bun in the oven...

as a newcomer to Britain I was invited for dinner and the friend said 'I've got a bun in the oven'- I blushed and apologised and said I was not sure I could eat rabbit. Oh they laughed.

Another French friend was married to a doctor and they ordered a fridge to put in an alcove. It fitted just right, with a few mm to spare and the chap said 'Great, just what the doctor ordered!' - she was really surprised and asked how he knew. Know what- he said

Tickety boo

Charlie's dead (when your petticoat is showing)
Petticoat
'A penny for them' (when someone appears deep in thought)
Don't get your knickers in a twist

Some sayings do hang around long after their origin has vanished. We can still be 'on tenterhooks' even though the cloth sellers are no longer worried their cloth will be stolen while it is outside getting stretched on tenterhooks.

And we still say we'll get something done 'by hook or by crook' even though the days are gone, that the locals could collect whatever firewood they could reach 'by hook or by crook'.

But - we no longer 'tune in' the radio or telly, fiddling with the controls till we get the best sound or picture. And we can't call the radio the wireless, 'cos wireless means something else these days.

And we don't have to 'spend a penny' any more - which is just as well, given the state of our no-longer-young bladders.

And we can't send the kids out for a penn'orth o' chips any more.