Good morning it is a beautiful day...


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:eyeballpc I win

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As pleased as Punch

Meaning

Very pleased.

Origin

'As pleased as Punch' derives from the Mr. Punch puppet character. Punch's name itself derives from Polichinello (spelled various ways, including Punchinello), a puppet used in the 16th century Italian Commedia dell'arte.

Punch and Judy shows, the popular summer-time entertainments on British beaches, have been somewhat in decline from the latter half of the 20th century onward, due to them being seen as politically incorrect. That's hardly surprising as the main character Punch is a wife-beating serial killer.

In performance, the grotesque Punch character is depicted as self-satisfied and delighted with his evil deeds and squawking "That's the way to do it!" whenever he dispatches another victim. Nevertheless, there is still what might be called a folk affection for the old rogue in the UK and it would be a shame to see the tradition fade away completely.

The show had an Italian origin and has been much changed over the years. It began in Britain at the time of the restoration of the monarchy in the 17th century. Samuel Pepys' Diary has an entry from 1666 that shows this early origin and also the popularity of the show even then:

"I with my wife... by coach to Moorefields, and there saw ‘Polichinello’, which pleases me mightily."

The phrase 'as pleased as Punch' appears fairly late in the story. The earliest known record is from William Gifford's satires The Baviad, and Maeviad, 1797:

Oh! how my fingers itch to pull thy nose! As pleased as Punch, I'd hold it in my gripe.

'As pleased as Punch' is now the most common form of the expression. When the term was coined it was just as usual to say 'as proud as Punch'. Charles Dickens, for example used the two terms interchangeably in his novels; for example:

David Copperfield, 1850: I am as proud as Punch to think that I once had the honor of being connected with your family.

Hard Times, 1854: When Sissy got into the school here..her father was as pleased as Punch.

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Shiver my timbers

Meaning

An oath, expressing annoyance or surprise.

Origin

Those of a certain age will remember Robert Newton, rolling his eyes and yarring it up in his archetypal Hollywood pirate role - Long John Silver in the 1950 film Treasure Island.

Robert Louis Stevenson used shiver my timbers several times in the original 1883 book, for example:

"Well, he [Old Pew] is dead now and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers, the man was starving!"

Of course, Newton made the most of such 'parrot on the shoulder' phrases and it also appears several times in the film's screenplay. Newton's version, like that of all self-respecting stage pirates, was shiver me timbers, with the occasional 'aaarh, Jim lad' thrown in.

The first appearance of the phrase in print is in Frederick Marryat's Jacob Faithful, 1834:

"I won't thrash you Tom. Shiver my timbers if I do."

One meaning of shiver, which is now largely forgotten, is 'to break into pieces'. That meaning originated at least as early as the 14th century and is recorded in several Old English texts. A more recent citation, which makes that meaning clear, is James Froude's Caesar; a sketch, 1879:

"As he crossed the hall, his statue fell, and shivered on the stones."

So, the sailor's oath shiver my timbers, is synonymous with (if so and so happens then...) let my boat breaks into pieces. The question is whether any real sailor used the term or whether it was just a literary invention. Well, we can't be sure, although the fact that it actually means something and isn't just Newton-style hokum must count in favour of it being an authentic sailor's oath.

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I like this sort of informative post thank you for the time in finding it.

For those who have no idea about Punch and Judy I put this picture on showing a typical show seen on most British beaches.

Attachment 359086

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Go Dolally


Meaning

Originally 'doolally tap', meaning unbalanced state of mind.
Origin

The spelling of dolally is fairly arbitrary and is seen as, 'go doolally', 'go doo-lally', 'go doolali' etc. This arbitrariness is due to it being an Anglicized version of an Indian place name rather than any English word.


The term is British Army slang, from the Deolali sanatorium, Marashtra, India and is first cited in Fraser & Gibbons', Soldier & Sailor Words, 1925:

"Deolali tap (otherwise doolally tap), mad, off one's head. Old Army."

Frank Richards, (Francis Philip Woodruff) was a soldier in the First World War and wrote a classic account of it in Old Soldiers Never Die . Richards was also a veteran of the Indian campaign, which he wrote about in in Old Soldier Sahib, 1936:

"Time-expired men sent to Deolalie from their different units might have to wait for months before a troop-ship fetched them home... The well-known saying among soldiers when speaking of a man who does queer things, ‘Oh, he's got the Doo-lally tap,’ originated, I think, in the peculiar way men behaved owing to the boredom of that camp."


The phrase is quite archaic now, even in its 'go Dolally' form. The tap is now rarely heard, but hasn't quite died out of everyday use.

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#10. "Rule of Thumb"
Now Means:
A common or ubiquitous benchmark. As in, "The rule of thumb is one part tonic to four parts gin."
Most say it came from ...
17th century English Judge Sir Francis Buller, who allegedly ruled that it was A-OK for a husband to beat his wife with a stick, given that said stick was no wider then his thumb.
This is the stuff that white trash dreams are made of.
So is that true?
As it turns out there isn't any record of Buller actually making this ruling, though he was known to be a big powdered wig-wearing dickhead to everyone around him regardless of sex. Still, roughly a year after the supposed ruling, British satirist James Gillray called out Buller in this cartoon, selling his thumb-width wife beating sticks:

I have NEVER heard of that phrase.....interesting!

Hmmmmmmmmmm...do you think I can get one on Ebay...lol