‘jigger-rabbit’: meaning and origin
Liverpool, England, 1966—an alley-cat—‘jigger’: a narrow passageway between the backs of urban terrace-houses
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‘jerry-builder’: meaning and origin
Liverpool (Lancashire, north-western England), 1833—a speculating builder who constructs cheap houses, flats, etc., with materials of poor quality, for a quick profit—the origin of the element ‘jerry’ is unknown
Read More‘Scousette’: meaning and origin
1945—a woman from Liverpool, a city and seaport in north-western England—from the noun ‘Scouser’, denoting a person from Liverpool, and the suffix ‘-ette’, used to form nouns denoting female gender
Read More‘vinegar trip’: meanings and origin
Lancashire, England, 1973—a wasted journey; a weird way of behaving; a fit of ill temper—origin unknown—one hypothesis is that when wine boats from the Mediterranean arrived in Liverpool, the wine was occasionally sour and therefore useless
Read More‘blind scouse’: meaning and origin
Liverpool, England, 1939—scouse without meat—“from the general early sense of ‘blind’ meaning ‘deficient’” (Liverpool English Dictionary)—‘scouse’, shortened form of ‘lobscouse’: “a dish of hashed meat stewed with potatoes and onions; an Irish stew” (English Dialect Dictionary)
Read More‘couldn’t punch a hole in a wet Echo’: meaning and origin
UK, 1954—used of a weakling or of an ineffectual person—‘Echo’ refers to the Liverpool Echo, a newspaper published in Liverpool, England—but perhaps refers, on one occasion, to the South Wales Echo, published in Cardiff, Wales
Read More‘Liverpool pantile’: meaning and origin
UK, 1870—a very hard ship’s biscuit—refers to the fact that these sea-biscuits were particularly carried by Liverpool merchant ships; likens the shape and hardness of these sea-biscuits to those of pantiles, i.e. roofing tiles curved to an ogee shape
Read More‘where the bugs wear clogs’: meanings and origin
Liverpool, England—(1957) an insalubrious place—(1961) the neighbouring town of Bootle regarded as a rough area—said to refer to the Knowsley’s Bug Circus of Bootle, which featured clog-shod, chain-smoking performing bugs
Read More‘three on the hook and three on the book’
interwar period—Liverpudlian dockers—three days at work and three days on the dole—‘hook’ refers to the dockers’ tool, ‘book’ refers to the unemployment register
Read More‘Liverpool gentleman’: meaning and origin
UK, 1839—a Liverpudlian, especially as opposed to a Mancunian—from the 19th-century distinction between the Liverpudlians, who were involved in trading, and the Mancunians, who were involved in manufacturing
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