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Local sayings from yesteryear!


peterinfrance

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My maternal granny always used a cup and saucer....she poured the tea out of the cup into the saucer and supped  her sugar laden tea out of that!

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2 minutes ago, Lysanderix said:

My maternal granny always used a cup and saucer....she poured the tea out of the cup into the saucer and supped  her sugar laden tea out of that!

Was she married to Compo Simmonite ? 😉😉

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Hope not! My Grandad, Harold. wouldn't have been amused. Thinking about him, nothing much amused him!😁

( She was just a country girl from  deepest, darkest Lincolnshire..., a daughter of a "Cottager". ( not to be confused with our current undersatnding of a similar word)🧐

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26 minutes ago, Lysanderix said:

Hope not! My Grandad, Harold. wouldn't have been amused. Thinking about him, nothing much amused him!😁

( She was just a country girl from  deepest, darkest Lincolnshire..., a daughter of a "Cottager". ( not to be confused with our current undersatnding of a similar word)🧐

It does annoy me when normal “ historical” words like Cottager are used for something else.

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On 05/07/2021 at 17:12, tozzin said:

It does annoy me when normal “ historical” words like Cottager are used for something else.

Hey-Ho…. Every day’s a school day……. 🙄

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Tozzins right about it being off topic, and away from where we started, but I must say it is fantastic to see these personal stories. I particularly liked the drinking of tea from the saucer, it reminded me of my grandad Roy Bownes who did just that and I had totally forgotten about it.

Maybe I should start another topic about "Local habits from yesteryear!" 

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Whowashiwewashiwithee actually did exist when I was a kid, I never criticise this sort of  localism, however what I do criticise is the injection of foul language in order to make a weak point. Have any of you attempted to translate East London slang, or have you, like me, thrown in the towel on that one?

 

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17 hours ago, DaveJC said:

 Have any of you attempted to translate East London slang, or have you, like me, thrown in the towel on that one?

 

One of my best friends is of East End Jewish origin, and when I first met him about 1977 I did find some of his pronouncements, such as "That ice-cream's a petrol" quite baffling. I gradually learned as I went along.

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17 hours ago, DaveJC said:

 what I do criticise is the injection of foul language in order to make a weak point.

 

Absobloodylutely.

 

Whoops.

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I have used the same West Indian car valet guy for donkey’s years and swear (tut tut) that his command of spoken English is worse now than it was when I first met him. But having said that, he could probably say similar of me, what with Americanisms and the shortening of words in my native language just for the hell of it.

I’m actually turning into grandfather, wait until I really get going.

🤪

 

 

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I have to admit that I picked this up from the "What we ate" topic started by Tozzin.

It is "Mashed" as in... The tea is mashing

or ...Let the tea mash.

A regular saying in our house in the 40s 50s and 60s.

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I don't thing mashing is particularly Sheffield.  With my crazy mixed-up dialect I'd certainly use it, my late Mum did (Coventry) as does my wife (N. London/Essex).

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Hi Martin,

The Complete Atlas of the British Isles. Reader's Digest (1965) has x2 pages devoted to Language and Dialects (pages 122/123). According to this publication Mash and Brew are common terms from the South Midlands to the Scottish Border. Other words for 'Mashing' tea include; Mask Tea - Scotland, Wet Tea - The West Country. Soak Tea - Cornwall. It also includes Make, Damp. Draw, Scald and Steep, but doesn't give any particular region for these differences.

Right, it's time to go and Mash!

Cheers, Wazzie Worrall.

 

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Well South Midlands to the Scottish Borders includes Coventry (Mum), Potteries (Dad), and also most of my life until I came south looking for a job.  So not particularly Sheffieldish then.

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Thanks Paul and Martin for the information. Clearly it is not just a Sheffield saying but I have never heard it except in Sheffield (and district) despite at one time or other living in many places the length and breadth of England and Scotland. 

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Whenever my mother was baking bread cakes I was sent to buy 2oz of “ Barm” she never ever called it yeast, in fact it was years later before I found out that Barm was actually yeast. But why or where did the name Barm come from?

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Barm comes from the Old English, and the earliest written use of it I have seen was from 1000 AD.  Barm is the yeasty froth from the top of the rapidly fermenting beer, it often has impurities in it which make it unsuitable for propagating for further brews, so is a bye-product.  It can be collected and sold as liquid or compressed as cake.

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When I worked at Whitbreads brewery at Lady’s Bridge, all the excess yeast that was produced was sold off to make Yeast-Vite and other products and of course in the baking industry, thanks for the Barm explanation.

With the consistency of “ Barm “ being rather soft, it makes me wonder if the phrase “ He’s Barmy “ infers that the individual it’s aimed at is slow on the uptake, not a full shilling, a sandwich short of a picnic, hasn’t got all his chairs at home, soft as a brush,

in short he’s or she’s soft.

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On 21/07/2021 at 20:32, tozzin said:

When I worked at Whitbreads brewery at Lady’s Bridge, all the excess yeast that was produced was sold off to make Yeast-Vite and other products and of course in the baking industry, thanks for the Barm explanation.

With the consistency of “ Barm “ being rather soft, it makes me wonder if the phrase “ He’s Barmy “ infers that the individual it’s aimed at is slow on the uptake, not a full shilling, a sandwich short of a picnic, hasn’t got all his chairs at home, soft as a brush,

 

....or, as I remember hearing in Sheffield, "Daft as a brush", which is illogical but rather picturesque.

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On 20/07/2021 at 19:53, MartinR said:

I don't thing mashing is particularly Sheffield.  With my crazy mixed-up dialect I'd certainly use it, my late Mum did (Coventry) as does my wife (N. London/Essex).

Interesting. I certainly remember hearing it in Sheffield. In Gleadless, my Auntie Betty used to come across the road and say to Mum "I've mashed" and they'd go and drink their tea together.

   Since then I've lived in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Brum, Hertford, St. Albans, London, South-Western France, Surrey, Sussex, Heanor and now the Fens, and I have never heard the expression used in any of those places. It's always been "brew". My Essex-girl wife doesn't use it either.

   "Wet" in this sense is, I think, military usage.

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1 hour ago, Athy said:

....or, as I remember hearing in Sheffield, "Daft as a brush", which is illogical but rather picturesque.

I think daft as a brush doesn’t really gel, whereas soft as a brush does have credence as the bristles on a house brush were soft and easily manipulated, daft just doesn’t fit even though I’ve heard the expression myself.

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On 29/07/2021 at 09:23, tozzin said:

I think daft as a brush doesn’t really gel, whereas soft as a brush does have credence as the bristles on a house brush were soft and easily manipulated, daft just doesn’t fit even though I’ve heard the expression myself.

Yes, that's why I said that it was illogical.

As I boy, I often heard "daft as a brush" but never "soft as a brush", even though "soft" and "daft" can be synonyms.

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I heard "daft as a brush" as a youngster.  I couldn't honestly say though if it was in Sheffield, Teeside or Tyneside.

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I grew up in Sheffield 5 and in our neck of the woods the phrase was interchangeable…….soft…..or daft as a brush.Personally, I still use “soft as a brush”. It’s more logical although hardly appropriate when thinking of a “yard brush”.

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15 hours ago, Lysanderix said:

I grew up in Sheffield 5 and in our neck of the woods the phrase was interchangeable…….soft…..or daft as a brush.Personally, I still use “soft as a brush”. It’s more logical although hardly appropriate when thinking of a “yard brush”.

Yard brush, I Remember the large yard brushes the road sweepers had with two holes for the stale so when one side of the wooded bristles wore down you could re-site the stale into the opposite hole, the joke was “ do you know what the other hole is for in the brush head  ? no, it’s where he puts his candle when he’s on nights !! “

 

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