[lit-ideas] Re: Since You Asked

Bonjour, j'aimerais savoir ce que signifie

"before i pop my clogs"
contexte : il faudrait que je visite cette ville before i pop my clogs... 

merci
There's much in to be enjoy'd in English. "Pop your clogs," is among expressions in this category. Pawning possessions is where it comes from, like "Pop goes the weasel," but don't get me started on what the weasel means. Try Wikipedia. When you pop something as useful as clogs--and you'll recall that working people all over Europe wore clogs; Yorkshiremen developed a shin-kicking sport with them--you're at the end of your journey, ready to die. It's people being funny in the manner of "Dinna push yer Grannie aff a bus," Scottish advice about how to be nice to old folk. I also like, "the dog's bollocks," which Partridge cites as a printers' term for this particular mark :- The idea that something good is "the dog's bollocks" is more likely to have come from the music hall, or the sardonic inventiveness of WW1's trenches. Anyway, last week it caused me to buy wine, sight unseen-- or the equivalent thereof re. taste--does English have an expression for this? "Ohne swilling" sounds about right to me, but who put moi in charge? Said wine was labelled, "The Mutts Nuts." Here's the fun: "What shall we crack tonight dear, with the Italian recipe offal and the mixed leaf toss up with rather cheeky balsamic drizzle? 
"Have you still got that bottle of Mutts Nuts?"
"The Wrattonbully Shiraz?"
"That's the stuff, or it would be if they could remember the bloody apostrophe." 
("The stuff," another version of the dog's bollocks)
Do carry on.


David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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