ROYAL EXPRESSIONS

Do You Know What British People Call A Person Full Of Energy?

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Speaking the same language doesn’t always guarantee effective communication. For example, the elderly and the young share a language but not a code. In the case of our fellow English speakers across the Atlantic, some words and phrases are quite specific to their culture. Have you ever heard someone say "Bagsy!" or what about "pulling a blinder"? In this article, we’ve gathered 10 British expressions and we’ll tell you all about their origins. Are you ready? Read on!

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Claiming the front seat or the first spot in line can be a messy business, especially when you are a kid. In American English, we call it "dibs." But in British English, the equivalent expression is "bagsy."

You don’t need to be a kid to use this expression, but it's more commonly heard among them in scenarios like claiming the last piece of cake, or that special seating in the front. Shotgun! Dibs! Bagsy! However you say it, claim away!

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Our article aside, whatever it is one is pulling, it must be really hard to do if one is blind, don’t you think? Well, that is basically the essence behind this British expression.

"Pulling a blinder" describes the result of achieving something that is deemed impossible or difficult but without any kind of effort at all. Skill might be important, but according to this expression, the X factor is good luck, and the person saying this is a bit skeptical about the achievement. Have you ever used it?

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This quirky phrase has a quirky backstory, and we’re here to tell you about it! Similar to "et voilá," this phrase is used when you get something done and want to celebrate. For example: "Just press that blue button, create an account, and Bob’s your uncle! You’re on social media!"

Now, as for the backstory, this phrase is believed to have originated in the 19th century, when the British Prime Minister Robert "Bob" Cecil appointed his nephew as Irish Secretary. This led people to believe that having an Uncle Bob makes everything easier and achievable.

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Yes, you read that right, this expression mentions Mickey. But it has nothing to do with Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. This playful expression means to tease or make fun of someone, often in a good-natured way.

Lighthearted and mildly irritating as it can be, this expression is a variation of a Cockney rhyme called "Mickey Bliss," but we won’t get into the euphemism behind it. You might hear it as "taking the mick" or even "taking the mickey out of someone."

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Imagine you have to paint your walls and ask a friend to join you in the task, only to find that the walls end up looking like a Pollock painting gone wrong! That is "a botch job".

The word "botch" has been in use since the Middle Ages to refer to the action of repairing something without much skill. Over time, it evolved to mean both a task done badly in a hurry and its obvious disastrous consequences. Have you ever done a botch job?

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We all know that person who, no matter the time of the day, is always full of energy, coming up with new plans, constantly coming and going, always on the move. Well, for the British, that person is "full of beans."

The origins of this expression go back to the 14th century, and its original version was "full of prunes." As for the use of beans, it refers to the food horses were fed back then. When they had their portion of beans for the day, they became quite energetic, hence this fun phrase was coined!

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The full expression is actually "give me a tinkler on the blower," and it is naturally used in colloquial, informal British English. Now, as for the meaning, it means to call someone on the telephone.

The main component of this phrase is the word "tinkle" which comes from Middle English and refers to a succession of ringing sounds." In that sense, the meaning of the word evolved in such a manner that it came to refer to the sounds made by the phone.

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The United Kingdom is known for many things, but one stands out the most: the rain! Gray, rainy days are so common that they came up with a quick way to refer to the only object that keeps us protected, the umbrella.

In British English, nobody asks for an umbrella; they ask for the "brolly." This short version of "umbrella" dates back to the 1870s, when it was recorded in Hotten’s Slang Dictionary. So, as you can imagine, this is also a colloquial term. Whenever you visit London, this term will surely come in handy!

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You’re meeting with some friends in the park, ready to chat and share. The sittings are limited and sharing now refers to the bench too. In that case, British people don’t say "scoot over," or "move over." Instead, they say "budge up."

The origins of this expression are unknown, but it is a relatively recent one as it can be traced to the mid-20th century.

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Nobody thinks dog food is particularly appetizing, but the meaning behind this expression takes that feeling to the next level. Similar to "dog’s breakfast," this expression refers to something that is a mess or a fiasco and it dates back to the beginning of the 20th century.

However, there is an alternative meaning: it also refers to someone dressed in a smart and fancy manner. In the UK, the latter is the more frequent meaning, but you can use it in either context. Choose your own adventure!

The creators behind timeless verses

Who said Humpty Dumpty was an egg? Stories of 10 ageless nursery rhymes

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We have been singing the same nursery rhymes to little kids for years and years, often without considering the words we are repeating. Some of these songs, narrating the adventures of farm animals, stars, and itsy bitsy spiders, have very cryptic lyrics that we learned as infants and never again questioned. Who wrote these rhymes? How long have humans been singing them to one another? In this article, we unveil the stories behind 10 timeless verses.

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Do you know the five stanzas of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?" Very few people do. The ultimate lullaby belongs to the opening verses of "The Star", a poem written in 1806 by English author Jane Taylor. The poem was originally published in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection by her and her sister Ann.

The couplets are set to the very famous French melody officially called "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman" ("Ah, will I tell you, mom"). It’s a universal classic from 1761; Mozart himself had composed a set of variations based on the melody. However, it wasn’t until thirty years after the Taylor sisters’ publication that another book proposed singing their poem to the catchy music. The nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" uses a variant of the same tune.

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Nowhere in the poem is it mentioned that Humpty Dumpty is an anthropomorphic egg. The lyrics are enigmatic and many attempts have been made to link them to historical figures, like kings or battle heroes. The first version of the rhyme appeared in writing in 1797 in Juvenile Amusements, a music collection by English composer Samuel Arnold. It is believed that "Humpty Dumpty" was 18th-century slang for a clumsy person.

Why an egg, then? Some believed the poem was a riddle to which the answer was that Humpty Dumpty was not a human, but some fragile thing. It was none other than Lewis Carrol, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who first depicted Humpty Dumpty explicitly as looking like an egg. The character appears on a wall in the popular book’s 1871 sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice meets him and points out how much like an egg he looks.

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"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is based on a true story. It was first published in 1830 by American writer Sarah Josepha Hale. She was a teacher who schooled girls and boys in her hometown, Newport, New Hampshire. One day, a student named Mary showed up accompanied by her pet lamb. This incident, the children’s reactions, and the obvious affection between Mary and her lamb —who "followed her everywhere she went"—, eventually inspired Hale to write a three-stanza poem called Mary’s Lamb.

In the same year, a composer from Boston, Lowell Mason, rearranged the poem and set it to music to have a singable version. We still use the words Mason wrote, but the melody we sing today is not the one he composed. We usually sing it to an 1867 tune known as "Merrily We Roll Along."

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For context about how old this song is, Mozart wouldn’t be born until 50 years after its earliest known version. "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" appears in a 1706 opera by English writer and composer Thomas d'Urfey. The play, The Kingdom of the Birds, included a song called "In the Fields in Frost and Snow", which was a very near version of the song we know today, down to the iconic "Here a Boo, there a Boo, every-where a Boo".

It is unknown whether this was already a popular song that d’Urfey quoted in his play. What we know, though, is that after his opera the song became very widespread, and eventually became a folk song with varying versions in Britain, Ireland, and North America.

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This one was conceived from the start as a song. The rhyme has only four lines. The first printing of the song is dated 1852 and attributed to author and teacher Eliphalet Oram Lyte. The melody, however, was very different from the one that was later popularized. It wasn’t until 1881 that the tune as we know it today was attached to the words.

The current version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat is intended to be sung as a four-part round canon. That means that the melody of each line can be combined to harmonize with any of the others. That’s why it’s usually taught to children and popularly used to teach choir singing.

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Children from as far back as the Late Middle Ages might have already been singing this song. The earliest printed version of nursery rhymes about the London Bridge falling appeared in England in 1744 in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, though the rhyme may have been sung long before this.

There are many myths behind the lyrics of this song, from claiming that the bridge falls because of Viking attacks, to stating that the "fair Lady" mentioned is Virgin Mary.

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This beloved nursery folk song was only born in 1938 when it was published as "The Bus" in the American Childhood magazine. Verna Hills, born in 1898 in Boston, conceived this tune to distract the little ones during long bus rides. That’s why the repetitive yet catchy lyrics enlist parts of the moving bus while adding some mimic or sound to go with it. "The Bus" eventually became a folk song also popular in Canada, the UK, and Australia.

The song is believed to be based on "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", an old English nursery rhyme about a group of young ones going about everyday chores. This one had been set to music from an opera published in mid-1700s London. Its melody and rhythm are very similar to the one we know today.

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Also known as the "Spider Song," this rhyme has received different names throughout English-speaking countries. Its earliest appearance seems to have been in Arthur Walbridge North’s 1910 book Camp and Camino in Lower California, except that it mentions a "blooming, bloody spider" instead.

In varying versions and regions, the spider has also been called "eency weency" and "teeny weeny." Other countries added further variations to one of the most famous nursery rhymes ever. In France, it’s a gypsy spider; in the Netherlands, it’s a beetle; and in Norway, the spider is called Peter.

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The timeless finger-counting nursery rhyme was designed to teach children coordination and dexterity. Famously, the words match the narration of the fates of 5 pigs while folding the fingers on a child’s hand one by one.

The first time the poem appeared in writing was in 1728, in a medley called The Nurses Song. Since then, over the decades, varying versions have been written. Some say it may have been inspired by "To Market, To Market," also known as "To Market, To Market, to Buy a Fat Pig," another folk nursery rhyme with a first version that dates back as far as 1598.

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You probably have noticed that the iconic ABC song uses the same melody as the aforementioned "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"; Ah! vous dirai-je, maman. However, the lyrics were not applied to the melody until 1835, when Boston publisher Charles Bradlee decided to borrow the familiar tune to sing the alphabet to it, as a strategy to help children learn letters through a catchy and well-known melody. It became a preschool classic, and it has been adapted to be used in many languages other than English.