Tag Archives: Fraser’s Phrases

Let’s Have a Knees-Up for St George!

By | Posted on April 23rd, 2013
Pie and mash, and yes, that green stuff is liquor.

Today, as you may already know, is St George’s Day. And this is a special day for all red-blooded Englishmen, because St George was a Greek man from Palestine, who became a Roman soldier in the third century, hundreds of years ...

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Six Innocent Phrases and Their Morally Suspect Origins

By | Posted on April 18th, 2013
Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and Public Enemy. A contemporary woodcut showing the 1649 beheading of Charles I. The Warder Collection.

From “by hook or by crook” to “going Dutch,” here are six charming expressions that have morally dubious origins.

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Four Words That Don’t Work Written Down (And One You Can’t Say Out Loud)

By | Posted on March 8th, 2013
Zhush T-shirt from Zazzle.com

Most words work just fine in both everyday speech and written on the page/screen. There are a few spelling problems here and there, especially over proper nouns like Leicester, Worcester, or those crazy words like through and cough, ...

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The Pond Effect: ‘Amelia’ Is Britain’s Top Baby Name (For Girls)

By | Posted on March 7th, 2013
Karen Gillan as Amy Pond

The temptation to present the following information as a chart rundown is almost overwhelming. However, calmer heads must prevail, especially as my references are all Alan “Fluff” Freeman and yours are more Casey Casem.

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Ten British English Words That Are Surprisingly Uncommon In The U.S.

By | Posted on February 27th, 2013
A training shoe, or trainer. Not to be used for sneaking.

Sometimes, in order to write about something, you have to go on a little voyage of discovery. So, having decided to research some words that are so common to British English it would hard to summon them without a reference point, but ...

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Ten Commonly-Misused Expressions From British English

By | Posted on February 14th, 2013
Mustard, unpassed.

Language is a liquid constant. Its only job is to communicate and, really, so long as it does this reasonably efficaciously, none of us have any reason to complain about the rights and wrongs of other people’s communication.

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Personality Quiz: Could You Pass For British?

By | Posted on January 10th, 2013
Union flag shoe

Some of you will have been reading Anglophenia for quite a while, absorbing huge chunks of British culture and possibly even dreaming of one day passing for a fully-fledge Limey.

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The Brit List: Five British Terms for the Unemployed

By | Posted on November 20th, 2012
A British dole queue. The past. (AP Photo)

Made Redundant

Let’s start with the nicest possible way to go from being in gainful employment to not being in gainful employment, when your job ceases to exist. It’s nothing you’ve done wrong, it’s merely that the company ...

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The Brit List: 10 British Words That Don’t Have a U.S. Equivalent

By | Posted on October 25th, 2012
Blackpool rock, in slices

Blag A little item of criminal slang that has found its way into common use. To blag something is to get it for free, possibly without deserving to.

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The Brit List: 10 American Words or Phrases Adopted by Brits

By | Posted on October 22nd, 2012
Bill and Ted: every bit as influential as their film said they were

In a forgotten corner of England’s green and (mostly) pleasant land — sure as the sun rises over the cricket pitch and the flies buzz around the damp thatch atop the old Post Office — some retired Colonel in the home ...

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