How do you define someone as common?

I've remembered another - probably the most common of all. Women who went into betting offices.

I was (mostly) a Goody Two Shoes at school but was hauled up for not transferring my hat badge from the winter boater to the summer one.

Men were considered common for spitting ( particularly in the street) and for smelling of BO.

Donald Trump would definitely count as common, both in my mum's day and mine.

Elrel after watching Piers Morgan on QT last week Dimbleby definitely needs to start taking charge. It was better this week, but he needs to be firmer. Give him the right to signal that someone's mic should be muted!

Another convent and grammar school girl here. Wearing hats, buttoned up coats, 'proper' shoes and not eating in the street are all familiar to me. I can only add low slung jeans and short skirts, too much make up and talking to boys in the street as examples of common behaviour.

I suppose there is an element of class in describing something or someone as common but wasn't it about making us into 'nice' girls who behaved with propriety, certainly didn't have sex before marriage and who would get a decent job and be respectable and good marriage material. I'm saying this tongue in cheek, these were my mother's values and they largely didn't apply to boys who were acknowledged to need to 'sow their oats' or have their way with girls who weren't nice!

I think the class thing was about a fear of falling by the wayside, because the lifestyle/class you had was often hard won and could easily be lost. Then, as now, losing your job, drinking too much alcohol, being arrested might well lead to slipping down the class ladder. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, for a young woman to become pregnant before marriage would have been a disgrace. How times have changed!

Mine was a bog standard grammar too, but as strict as any convent school. Girls were lambasted in assembly for being seen outdoors without their beret, or with their blazer unbuttoned, eating (anything) in the street, and on one memorable occasion, “consorting with the workfolk” who were building our new science lab. Consorting = speaking to. We were told to walk briskly by them on the other side of the corridor, averting our eyes.

Jalima and Wilma - I thought Dustin Black talked a lot of sense on QT. He also came across as intelligent and well mannered. I used to enjoy watching QT but too often over the past few years discussion has descended into a boorish, unproductive, shouting match. Dimbleby needs to be a stronger chair.

Convent girls seem to be quite common on here. I've only known one before.

Elrel my Dad wouldn't let me have my hair cut because he believed nice girls just had long hair. When we moved to England I was 14 and missing Scotland and all my friends, so my Mum persuaded him to let me have a page boy cut at her hairdressers. I hadn't asked for it, so it was a lovely surprise when my Mum told me.

Jalima that was Dustin Black and he's married to Tom Daley which is why he lives in the UK. I really liked him, but he is a bit of a Hollywood lovey. He's a director/producer and an Oscar winning screenwriter. My guess he was invited because he's a serious LGBT activist and a founder member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. He was brought up as a Mormon with a disabled mother, so he has an interesting background. I'm always a bit ashamed when I watch QT and see someone from another country with a better understanding of current events in the UK than a lot of the population. The banker was good too.

I wanted my hair cut in a fringe but DM said fringes were common. I don't know where that idea came from. By the time I'd been on a French exchange at 15 and Brigitte Bardot had emerged I had a pony tail and, of course, a fringe. I can't remember either how this came about or what DM's reaction was.

We always holidayed on the East coast of Scotland ( Dunbar, North Berwick, or Leven), as my mother maintained that “ only common people” holidayed on the West coast.

( The Bodach holidayed in Girvan. It is on the West coast.)

We weren't allowed to take our hats off until we got off the bus.
The odd part about that statement,is: we never questioned it. Who was watching?

It wasn't only convent schools that had strict rules about wearing hats and not wearing mini skirts - mine was a Grammar School. I also had to wear hat and gloves to Methodist Sunday School and church.

I think the ‘upper classes’ and the ‘lower classes’ have more in common than the ‘middle classes’.

I don’t remember the nuns saying anything else about behaviour or what is ‘common’ mind you, it was just the school hat thing.Which I can sort of understand now ( although not then, when there were boys around to be impressed with my honey blonde hair in a trendy flick style)
?

You are right Annie common is nothing to do with class at all.
‘Common’ has probably changed in the last 40 years, and btw did we all go to the same nun run school with an 11 th commandment of ‘thou wilst never, ever remove your school hat/beret whilst travelling to and from school’?

Ooh yes- "having" to get married was very common (in both senses of the word!)

I remember the hat and gloves hing,my cousin who is 15 years older than me got a boyfriend who Granny thought was very common,he talked her into leaving her hat,bag and gloves at home and even worse he wore sandshoes ...what we would call trainers ..AND she got prgnant before she was married .Of course THAT was because he was common too ...lol

Interesting that church schools seem to have such an influence on culture. My mother went to a Cof E school (left when she was 13) one of the things they were taught was that a lady never went out without a hat and gloves (and this in a working class area). I don't think it was originally to do with income but with a standard of behaviour that had to be applied no matter how poor you were.
So "common" would mean you did things in public that weren't acceptable, dressed wrongly, used coarse language or swore. It also seems to be connected with behaviour my mother referred to as "cheap".
Of course the upper class could get away with any of those things and never be called common.

Can i add wearing too much make up to the list especially bright red lipstick!!!

How times have changed from when i was a girl, now anything seems to go.

Including decorum!!!!

Yes, talking to BOYS was most definitely common, according to my school!

My friends and I must have been most dreadfully common as we met the boys out of school and I even married one and (it gets worse, dear reader) we have some children.

Hi fellow ex convent girls, another one here shaped by nuns' take on what was common as follows:

Being seen in town without our white gloves or straw boater hats. Not naice Eating chips, not only not naice, but doubly beyond the pale as not only was one eating in the street, a big no no, but one obviously had to take orf one's white gloves to do so. I got into trouble for being been seen with a lollipop stick poking out of my mouth which some teacher mistook for a fag (as if ) I had a devil of job trying to prove that one! Patent shoes in case the reflection of one's knickers were seen in them. I gather most convent girls were told that one along with never use tampons, because, in the eye's of God it's a sin! Talking or dallying with the opposite sex. Lack of breeding, our nuns were always pointing out those who had breeding as opposed to those who didn't, mystifying really because one way or another we all had breeding otherwise how would we exist

My mother seemed to think bleached blonde hair was common, but clearly not dyed dark hair which she had done when she went to the hairdressers. Women who went out with bare legs. Something I do all the time, well not at the moment, cos it's too cold.

My own definition, very unnaturally orange people,
or that very over processed look of say Katie Price, women who go out with an outfit that displays their backside, swearing in public, particularly if there are very young children around, peeing or worse in the street which usually pertains to the very drunk, behaving badly abroad, saying aint or "them things", the ostentatious way non celebs, such as Kardashians display their wealth, some TOWIE character who appeared on "I'm a Celebrity" showing off a £70,000 watch said he couldn't actually tell the time

Many years ago I had an American work colleague who changed any pre-conceptions I may have had about loud, brash Americans.
He was lovely.

There was a nice young American man on QT the other evening, not common at all, but I did think that if he called something 'beautiful' once more I would throw something at the tv.
It sounds too much like a Trumpism, ie 'it's gonna be a beautiful thing'.

When I was young, Americans in general were considered rather common, probably because of their perceived loudness and respect for money. Some of this prejudice lingers in me, I’m afraid.

Donald Trump is very common.
Meghan Markle is a bit common.

Wonder what her username would be?

uncommon?

or even a step-grandmama