Friendly chat

Hello, Although revived in the fifties & sixties, the word Bird, to describe a young lady, was a Cockney expression that was in use during the middle ages. It was also classed as a possessive pronoun, which suggested that the lady belonged to someone. "My Bird", maybe. Can anyone help on this, please.

I guess it depends on who you are with then !

Pigeon? or possibly Turkey.

Argon, 'Mate' comes to my mind here in OZ. Although everyone is called Mate all the world over I reckon.

Apparently, it's Scottish not Cockney, and it's spelt "burd".

Belushi - that makes perfect sense. A lot of Scottish words - like "kirk" for church come straight from Scandinavian - presumably Viking - languages. "Brud" is Norwegian for bride. It wouldn't be unusual to speak of "my bride" referring to your girlfriend or wife.

Hmmmm.... now this gets interesting! Those winged things we love to see above us are, of course, birds..... but that word was corrupted by the effect of "metathesis", which tends to swap the middle letters of a word. What is now a bird was once a "brid". The same corruption caused our own St. John's bridges to be known as "burges" (and Yorkshire's "thirdings" to be known as "th'ridings"). So, with Johnnie's fascinating "brud" for bride - did that corrupt in the same way, I wonder, giving rise to our rather 70's expression of "burds" or "birds" for girls?

The internet gives various possibilities as to the origin but nothing cast iron. As with the Scottish burd/brud, there was an old English word burde meaning noble woman or young woman (used for the Virgin Mary too) but apparently there isn't an unbroken link to the present. It pops up in 1915 but doesn't seem to be common until the 60s and 70s. It possibly comes from the increasingly colourful clothing after the war and connects to brightly coloured birds, although it could also be a reference to bird brained, which has a fairly unbroken link to the distant past. As with many words it can be used affectionately or as an insult.

A little Googling has enlightened me to the word "biddy", which is the female version of a "geezer". A biddy, though, is an annoying old lady, which is the opposite of a bird.

So it looks like I am an old Biddy now. Who on earth started this topic in the first place?

I used to suffer from insomnia, mainly because my brain wouldn't shut up. Even when I wasn't worrying or excited about something, it would find something to chat about. At a very low point I discovered the value of 'comforting witter'. I started quietly playing mild comedy drama (esp Radio 4) on auto play and now can get to sleep no trouble 99.9% of the time and fall back to sleep again if I wake. No pills necessary. Not only does the thing drown out my busy brain, it overrides the noises all houses make as they cool, that tended to make me wake up, thinking I was being burgled. It has to be something funny enough to keep part of me listening but not so interesting it keeps me awake. These are comedies I've been listening to most of my life, so the voices are familiar, like relatives and their oft told stories. I just have to listen to something different on long car drives!

Hi Helen I used to find the same sort of response on long air flights between Australia and the UK. I'd look for the worst or least interesting movie on offer, play it, and in no time I'd nod off. Worked every time. At the other end of the scale, I remember Qantas put on an episode of Mr Bean as we were gliding down to Heathrow - I turned to look at the passengers behind me to find the whole panoply of humankind - every possible colour and creed laughing together. If only we could get Mr Bean to some of these warmongering political "leaders"!

Hello, I love the chats on here, thank you all. Anyway, as I wasn't saying, travelling to B'ham from Coventry station, at the top of the left side high up embankment is our lovely school. That sometimes makes me more silly than usual. Yesterday, around lunch time I departed for Wolverhampton, very comfy on a tabled seat, whereupon I opened up my sandwich box, to a bung-hole sandwich. That was school language for a cheese sandwich. I had made it from my thick sliced tiger loaf. The one sarny filled my sandwich box, it was compressed with the lid on actually. Folks sat in visual range were laughing, as I forced my teeth, into my doorstep bung-hole. I did enjoy the sarny as well as causing amusement. My question is, do or did you have odd names for particular food stuffs?

We had odd words for all sorts of things but not many for food. Nudgets for nuggets, was one. Snake and pygmy pie is probably well used. The weirdest words were used when we didn't know what we wanted. We'd be threatened with gruts (like American grits) and wemmel which meant 'nothing at all'. The gruts was from some Scottish radio comedy but Dad couldn't remember where wemmel came from.

Was your bung hole sandwich a door stop Philip ?