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Save on MOT Bills
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Great Thread,
The Major 8)
TOE-RAG
Aha, another term from that inexhaustible store of rude British slang expressions (though it is also well-known in Australia). It means that the person addressed is contemptible or worthless, a scrounger. Though it can be a relatively mild insult among friends, you should avoid saying it to strangers unless you want a smack in the mush or a punch up the bracket.
The original form—in the nineteenth century—was toe rag. It referred to the strips of cloth that convicts or tramps wrapped around their feet as an inadequate substitute for socks. The first recorded use is by J F Mortlock in his Experiences of a Convict of 1864: “Stockings being unknown, some luxurious men wrapped round their feet a piece of old shirting, called, in language more expressive than elegant, a ‘toe-rag’ ”. It didn’t take long to become a term of abuse—in 1875 a book on British circus life said that “Toe rags is another expression of contempt ... used ... chiefly by the lower grades of circus men, and the acrobats who stroll about the country, performing at fairs”.
It seems to have come to wider British knowledge and use from the 1970s on, largely because it was aired in the ITV police series The Sweeney about the London mobile detective force called the flying squad (rhyming slang: flying squad = Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street), a programme that delighted in using London slang.
The tow-rag spelling is sometimes seen because people have lost the link to the original sense, long since obsolete.
Lewis Gerolemou.
The belief that an invalid MOT or TAX disc invalidates your insurance is almost a myth.
To qoute an article in the driving section of the Times...last yr, the answer to the 'myth':
"Almost always wrong. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) says that insurance policies will still pay out in full on any third party claims and in the case of damage to or theft of your own vehicle, payouts may be reduced to reflect the lower market value of a car without an MoT.
There are very few policies that insist in the small print that an MoT must be in force otherwise they will refuse to pay. These, however, are extremely rare, but it is worth checking the wording just in case.
If the car has no road tax, the ABI says insurers are still obliged under the Road Traffic Act to pay out for both third party and comprehensive claims. The fact that you are commmitting an offence by not having tax is irrelevant."
Grass: To grass on someone means to inform some higher authority about possible misdemeanours. The origin here is far from clear but I have found two possibilities.
The first relates to the fact that this type of informing is often done in a whisper. In the 1940s the singing group the "Ink Spots" had a world wide hit with the song "Whispering Grass". By extension whispering became known as grassing.
The other explanation relates to London slang starting with to shop someone, derived from the concept of the Coppers' shop. Someone who habitually informed to the police became a shopper and rhyming slang produced a grasshopper which was then shortened to grass. You can take your choice.
Here`s one for you:
To take the gilt off the gingerbread
as in to show something up as worth far less than first thought.
Grass might come from "Grass in the park" which is (allegedly) rhyming slang for nark which in turn might come from Romany ("naak" for nose) but has nothing to do with the American "narc".
Grass might also come from rhyming slang as you say from "grasshopper" for copper (or possibly "shopper" but this more Austrailian than Cockney)
Grass might also be from "snake in the grass".
I think the term "grass" turns up in print from about the 1930s onwards so "Whispering Grass" is probably not right. It also tends to rule out snake in the grass since it would have shown up much earlier had that been the root. "Grashopper" occurs from the 1890s which also lends weight to that explanation.
Meanwhile:
Gilding the gingerbread was when a fake gilt was used to decorate gingerbread (possibly as early as the 15th century). "Taking the gilt off the gingerbread" means to remove your fantasies, to rob you of your illusions and leave the dull reality behind.
Lewis Gerolemou