Its a funny old language

The English language has some odd sayings.

Take ‘big girls blouse’ for example.

There was me thinking it was a very old saying, wen in fact it is reasonably recent.

Well if you can call 1969 recent.

It is believed to be the shortened version of ‘He’s flapping like a big girls blouse’. According to Wiki the expression was first used in a TV sitcom called nearest and Dearest.

And no I’ve never heard of it either.

Ok, how about this one then: ‘soppy date’ or ‘soppy apeth’ Now I used to think that the ‘apeth’ bit was related to apes in general, ad so Mum was calling is silly monkeys.

I cannot find an origin, but my Mum used to use both expression. With a bit of googling I discovered that the ‘apeth’ is  likely to be a shortened version of ha’peth, or halfpenny.

Have you ever herd anyone say in surprise ‘well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs’. This colloquialism is supposed to have come from the Birmingham area, but that is about as much as I can discover about it.

Have you ever been told to ‘take a hair of the dog’ to recover from a night out on the town. Doctors in medieval times believed that the treatment for being bitten by a rabid dog was to put one of the hairs of that dog that bit you into the wound, in other words as the antidote.

Well time for me to go get some shut eye. So all I have left to say is Goodnight sleep tight.

Seems that comes from the times when mattresses were supported in bedframes by ropes, tight ropes meant a good night’s sleep on a firm bed.