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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:
BeckAndCall · 01/11/2013 12:54

Without going through all 13 pages - did anyone give the correction derivation of Apeth yet?

It's correctly written as Ha'apeth - an abbreviation of the 'half penny worth' or shortened to 'ha'penny worth'. Meaning, of course, less than a full penny worth - being a bit dim!

all those years of listening to the grandparents talking in riddles seems to have been leading just to this moment Grin

Lovecat · 01/11/2013 12:56

Yes, Clary, my mum used to say that one too!

Sazzle, we used to say 'spied ya!' or just 'spy!' when we were kids if we'd caught someone out, but I never realised it came from "spied yer arse", as I never heard anyone say the full version...

I think that the Hesperus was a ship that ran aground and broke apart.

And I vaguely remember being told many years ago that Piffy on a Rockbun was a corruption of Patience on a Monument (ie a statue), but how one got corrupted into the other I don't know!

Lovecat · 01/11/2013 12:57

We also had (courtesy of our Glaswegian Brown Owl)

Those that ask, don't get
Those that don't ask, don't want.

squishee · 01/11/2013 13:02

This thread is great. Glad it's in Classics.

Dadisms from the 80s (me Dad was from Up North):

Pack it in!

Blast!

Pocks on it!

And yep,

Yer daft ha'peth.

We'd get pop delivered in glass bottles in the run-up to Crimbo. Dandelion and Burdock was a favourite.

goodasitgets · 01/11/2013 13:04

When I asked why?
Because Y isn't a Z
Confused

Corygal · 01/11/2013 13:17

My mum, who is very posh and old, frequently bewails the poor quality of clothes these days. Of course we were on the top of a bus when she pulled off a loose button and announced "What a really frightful blow job".

When I protested, she claimed that 'blow job' is army slang for a bad bit of work. Never have I heard this from anyone else, filthy old bitch is my sainted mother.Grin

Artus · 01/11/2013 13:29

Someone day dreaming - Stood there like Joe Lock i'the park! (A statue in a park in Barnsley!)

My Grandma when asked for something e.g an expensive toy "You can have it when my ship comes in"

DwellsUndertheSink · 01/11/2013 13:57

my granny used to say:

"patience is a virtue
Virtue is a Grace
Grace is a little girl who didnt wash her face"

also, if one burped...

"Pardon Mrs Harden, there's a sparrow in your garden"

Thymeout · 01/11/2013 13:59

Short arms, long pockets - someone who's tight with the cash.

Mumpers - people who time their visits to coincide with mealtimes.

Sew your clothes on your back, you'll end up in the workhouse. (I guess because it's lazy not to take the garment off and mend hem/sew on button properly.)

In my family, it was 'What's for dinner? Bread and pullet.' Pullet is a sort of chicken, a capon?

A drama-llama was 'Sarah' - after Sarah Siddons.

Annanias (or shortened to Annani) when I was suspected of telling lies.

YerDaftApeth · 01/11/2013 14:07

Eau I'd forgotten about 'if wit were shit, you'd be constipated' it's a good one.

BeckAndCall it is ha'porth I just always heard it as apeth. I'm from Yorkshire, think it was used a lot there.

DH says 'trunky want a bun'

YerDaftApeth · 01/11/2013 14:10

'Put big light on' was another one.

'Take your coat off, or you won't feel the benefit when you go outside'.

These have already been mentioned up thread, we used them a lot in our house.

KissesBreakingWave · 01/11/2013 14:53

If brains were dynamite, he'd not have enough to blow his own hat off.

(I'm actually coming back here and reposting them as I hear them.)

ShriekingGnawer · 01/11/2013 15:05

GigiDarcy - it's not 'swings in roundabouts' it's 'swings AND roundabouts'. As in, it all evens out in the end, what we make on the swings we lose on the roundabouts.

This thread is great. My mum said 'get a wiggle on'. Dad used to threaten to marmalise or spiflicate us. I use the same on my kids. And threaten to defenestrate them.

BeckAndCall · 01/11/2013 15:16

YerDaftApeth - will I'm from the East Riding and we do talk our own dialect out there!!

Quangle · 01/11/2013 22:44

my grandma used to say that "bread and pullet" thing - I never really knew what it meant beyond the notion that there wasn't anything very exciting for dinner.

MadonnaKebab · 01/11/2013 23:21

I think the Piffy on a Rockbun one is
Puffin on a rock

themidwife · 02/11/2013 07:47

Another classic - "I'm neither use nor ornament!" meaning looking & feeling shite today!

AnyFuckerForAScone · 02/11/2013 08:19

I have just reached SlangKing's post.

I tell my dc to stop being a big girls blouse. Blush

Daft apeth is a favourite too.

Does anyone else say Cute as a button? Game as a pebble - that was my grandad and the only other place I have seen it is in Georgette Heyer which he definitely didn't read!

YerDaftApeth · 02/11/2013 11:55

We say 'Cute as a button" in our house AnyFuckerForAScone

Another one DH sometimes says is when someone asks what's for dinner he says 'shit with sugar on'.

GemmaTeller · 02/11/2013 15:55

playground threat: 'd'yer want a knuckle butty?'

Stellarpunk · 02/11/2013 16:21

Ohh not read 'you'll 'ave me in Dickie's medah' which is Lancastrian and means if I don't do get in smart us hand do something, it's like bring in Richard IIIs meadow. Us Lamcastrians, we bear a grudge for a long long time!

And another racist one, to the question, 'where is mum?' 'She's run away with a black man!' Shocking!

Stellarpunk · 02/11/2013 16:22

Jesus wept that made NO sense!

It means you need to get on with the task in hand, or it will go bad for you.

Oh and 'not as green as he's cabbage looking' is a backhanded compliment.

Gobbolinothewitchscat · 02/11/2013 16:33

Ooooh - lots of them:

"Stop acting like Sarah Bernhardt" if we were being overly dramatic or whiny

"What Jock shot at the loch" - if we were pestering to know what was for tea

"What's good to gie is good to tak" - ie if someone's acting unreasonably/unfairly they shouldn't be surprised if people act the same way in response

Being "left to cool in the skin you got hot in" - not reacting to someone being unreasonable or a child having a temper tantrum

My Mum also talks about the wreck of the Hesperus and "looking like a bag of rags"

SanityClause · 02/11/2013 16:40

My father used to say ""Bunkum!" if something was incorrect.

Information on something (like leaflets or instruction manuals, that sort of thing) was called "Guff".

An old boyfriend used to say, "I'm so hungry, I could eat the dick off a low flying duck."

MaMaPo · 03/11/2013 02:41

I have plenty of (Australian flavored) ones of these, but I have heard loads of the above from my kiwi parents and grandparents.

Flat out like a lizard drinking - very busy indeed

Few sandwiches short of a picnic/ a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock / as thick as two short planks / as thick as pigshit - not very bright

My mum always told us kids, that we were 'carrying on like a pork chop', ie making a fuss. She never knew what it meant. Then we heard the full expression - ','carrying on like a pork chop at a Jewish wedding'. !!!