(The "shyer" bit must have shared an etymological root with "coconut shy" and one still hears cricket commentators talking about a fielder having a "shy" (throw) at the stumps.
#Use lose your marbles how to
(Again, I have no idea how to spell either but the "arly" was slang for marble and the "shyer" bit referred to the fact that punters (other schoolboys) were invited to try to win a small stack of marbles. Essentially, an inie was a large steel ball that was worth more than even a goon.Īt school the most popular marble pastime was the "arly shyer". What I do remember is that the word consisted of two, not three, syllables and that the "r" was never pronounced - it came out as something like "inies". Nobody ever wrote the word down so perhaps the things should be spelt "ironys".
And then a lucky few, whose dads or uncles worked in factories or workshops, would bring to school things called, as I recall, "ironies". (If you think about it, most men, even those of the most limited vocabulary, are masters of the synonym when it comes to describing, shall we say, their meat and two veg, crown jewels, etc.)īack in the days of which I write we had marbles and we had goons. A few years later, when we boys realised we had testicles, we used to refer to these, somewhat vulgarly, as "goons". They were greatly prized.Ī goon, for the historical record, was pronounced, not as in Goon Show but much quicker. A "goon" was basically a large marble and could be worth between three and 10 times the value of an ordinary marble.
We would all spend large parts of our pocket money buying marbles and sometimes we would shell out, over the odds, for a thing called a goon. Someone or something that is lower than a snake’s belly is of a very low moral standing.When I was a schoolboy from Plumstead, nobody had an iPad because, back then, the fax machine hadn't even been invented, never mind the iPad or Facebook.īack then, for a few months a year, boys of my age would become avid marble collectors and traders. Low-hanging fruits are things that are easily achieved. If you love someone, it doesn’t matter what they look like. If someone loses their shirt, they lose all their money through a bad investment and gambling. If someone has lost their marbles, they’ve gone mad. If someone loses their bottle, they lose the courage to do something. If someone loses the plot, they have stopped being rational about something. To lose one’s reputation or standing is to lose face. Often fitting when one is stunned or dismayed. Later, it came to mean any excessive talk might sabotage a project.Īn exclamation used when nothing else ill fit. If they talked too much (had loose lips) they might accidentally provide the enemy with anecdotal information that might later cause their ship to be tracked and bombed and sunk, hence LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS. LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS comes from World War I and/or World War II when sailors on leave from their ships might talk about what ship they sailed on or where it had come from or where it was going. SINK SHIPS refers to anything from small acquaintances to long and healthy relationships (with friends or a significant other.) So when one says LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS, one is basically saying if you can’t shut up you are going to end hurting people, usually psychologically or emotionally. To have loose lips means to have a big mouth susceptible to talking about everything and to everyone.
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