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Original poster

You daft apeth

416 replies

Kasterborous · 30/10/2013 08:50

No, not you but I heard this phrase yesterday and haven't heard it for ages. We used to say it when anyone had done something daft, but in a lighthearted way.

Another old favourite is 'crosspatch' as in 'don't be a crosspatch' when someone is being -well - cross.

OP posts:
SerenaJoy · 31/10/2013 23:19

Oh and 'scrubbing a hammock' as a response to the question 'what are you doing?' (normally used derisively when it was quite obvious what they were doing...).

SerenaJoy · 31/10/2013 23:11

We used to be threatened with being sent to 'the home with the jaggy trousers' if we were naughty (jaggy meaning itchy or prickly).

If someone was a bit gobby they were said to 'have a mouth like Gibb's Entry'. Gibb's Entry is a close (alley way) in the old town in Edinburgh.

Also 'cough it up, it'll do the cat' if someone had a particularly, er, productive cough... [boak]

flatiron · 31/10/2013 22:58

Mum also, when I was being particularly (and evidently irritatingly) skittish - "Stop acting the giddy goat"!

flatiron · 31/10/2013 22:38

Her Grandma to Mum, then Mum to me - "You'd try the patience of Job and ten thousand Jobs". I never used to think I was that naughty Grin
Was Job very patient?

DwellsUndertheSink · 31/10/2013 22:38

Yes to squinny! My kids are always squinnying!

JemR234 · 31/10/2013 22:35

To children who are asking for something because someone else has it, my grandma used to say 'Eee, if you saw the sea you'd want a wee.'

My mum said it to my DS the other day and it really tickled me.

WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes · 31/10/2013 22:30

What about squinny Dwells? I'm from the Pompey area too and only ever heard it there, never in any other place I've lived.

DwellsUndertheSink · 31/10/2013 22:28

oh and "you look a Bobby Dazzler"

DwellsUndertheSink · 31/10/2013 22:26

I love some of these - my dh is a yorkshireman, and Im a Pompey Skank, so we have need of translators at times...

Has anyone mentioned:

"Hells Bells and Buckets of Blood".

"Bloody Nora" is one of my aunts favourites - who was Nora? and equally, "Gordon Bennet" - who was he?

"I dont give a fishes tit" (the equivalent of a rats arse)

YerDaftApeth · 31/10/2013 22:17

I love 'heavens to murgatroyd'

A few people have mentioned variations of 'eee well I'll go down the bottom of our stairs' I'd never heard that one before.

ElectricalBanana · 31/10/2013 22:05

Tiggy I use guts for garters a lot!

And heavens to mugatroyd

And ecky thump

And my favourite is " well I stood there like piffy" .... I think it means standing not knowing what is going on

I also like " pimple on a muffin"

And "eee well I'll go down to the bottom of our stairs"

I am a mancunian ( 9 generations) and proud as punch!

tiggyhop · 31/10/2013 21:57

Has anyone contributed "have your guts for garters" yet? Brilliant

Quangle · 31/10/2013 19:47

My eye and Betty Martin ...meaning a likely story. Or as my generation would say "Jimmy Reckon"

The Betty Martin bit is a corruption of theLatin for "bless me st Martin" though I dont know why.

WhoKnowsWhereTheSlimeGoes · 31/10/2013 19:40

Her grave is quite near where I live. It was big news at the time apparently Sad.

Quangle · 31/10/2013 19:38

You look like the Wreck of the Hesperus

YerDaftApeth · 31/10/2013 19:34

That's awful about Sweet Fanny Adams. I never really thought about where all these phrases/sayings came from.

WhoKnowsWhereTheSlimeGoes · 31/10/2013 19:22

This was about 150 years ago BTW.

WhoKnowsWhereTheSlimeGoes · 31/10/2013 19:20

Sweet Fanny Adams was a real person, a young girl, murdered by a local man in Hampshire and dismembered. Her name became slang for stew, and then gradually assumed the meaning we know of worthless, nothing at all.

onetiredmummy · 31/10/2013 18:38

Sweet Fanny Adams - isn't that the polite version of sweet fuck all? As in nothing.

Sweet F A also used.

babe2be · 31/10/2013 17:07

YerDaft - It seemed to be interchangeable with the cliff saying too (you saying that has just reminded me), half the time it was the oven and half the time it was the cliff :)

Orangeanddemons · 31/10/2013 17:00

Also

Fair clemmed and spitting feathers for thirsty

Orangeanddemons · 31/10/2013 16:58

You've got rice to come....meaning what you want will never happen
As much use as a handbrake in a canoe...useless person
Was tha born in a barn.....kindly shut the door
Them that asks don't get, and them that don't ask don't want...always said to me when I wanted an ice cream

YerDaftApeth · 31/10/2013 16:45

Oh yes to the 'if xyz' but it was if they 'jumped of a cliff' with us.

babe2be · 31/10/2013 16:32

ooh just thought of some more
'sod that for a game of soldiers' - i.e no way am I doing that!
'Scotch mist' - in answer to a question such as 'what's that'?

babe2be · 31/10/2013 16:05

My mum and Nan said these types of things all the time! Wow, this thread takes me back.
'If xyz stuck their head in an oven would you'? - i.e. would you copy everything xyz does even if it's stupid?
Having a chinwag - having a talk/natter
'I'll give you something to cry about in a minute' - if they thought you were crying needlessly
Up the wooden hill to bedfordshire - said to us to as we were going upstairs to bed
'A little bird told me' - a way of someone telling you that they know about xyz
'a word in your shell like' - a word in your ear, i.e. can I have a word
'look like you've/i've been dragged through a hedge backwards' - look a mess
goes like billy-o/like the clappers - go quickly