Tinker’s cusses

shine166

thai malaysia addick said:

You can’t have your cake and eat it. Why would you want cake you can’t eat?

If you eat it, its gone..... so you cant both have it and have eaten it.

blackpool72

CatAddick said:

Addickted said:

"Just sell the club and fuck off" is an old Flemish saying meaning, just sell the Club and fuck off.

I think that's another one that has been corrupted over time.  I believe the original was "Just fuck off and sell the club"

I am mortified that someone would think that.

addick05

Uboat said:

addick05 said:

sillav nitram said:

You can ‘sling your hook’ is it a reference to the Captain in Peter Pan?

No! Think it MIGHT be another old naval term, possibly to do with rigging your hammock?

I am standing by waiting be corrected.

So you're offering a definitive answer whilst suggesting it's probably wrong. 
Come on mate, you can't simultaneously retain your cake whilst eating it. 

Right, I was close. Here's the 'definitive' term. The term sling your hook is polite way of telling someone to go away. This term has a nautical origin. Hook was a name given to the ship's anchor, and the sling was the cradle that housed the anchor. Therefore, to sling your hook meant to lift anchor, stow it and sail away.

Right, time to 'splice the main-brace' methinks.

EastTerrace

Graham Norton was interviewing a writer on his radio show last week and she explained how ‘Driving me round the bend’ came from the curved driveways that used to lead up to  old large Mental Hospitals/Asylums, to make the buildings seem less imposing.

McBobbin

Heavens to Betsy. 

Who what why?

I heard it in a new Zealand accent once. Came out as hivvins to bitsy.

Stig

I thought it was heavens-a-betsy.

It's no more clear though.

Stig

There's a good one here on Sweet Fanny Adams.

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sweet-fanny-adams.html

shine166

Stig said:

There's a good one here on Sweet Fanny Adams.

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sweet-fanny-adams.html

Lucky Mr Adams

MrOneLung

Stig said:

soapboxsam said:

There's an Elephant in the room.

A jumbo problem which really should be dealt with. 

Where did this idiom come from ?

Don't know, but it was unheard if before QI now it's absolutely everywhere.

what ?

I have known this saying since i was kid in the 70's