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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Pond Gap
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Heavenly Anarchist:
quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Most people now I think have their main meal in the evening. But the middle class, self-conscious about calling it dinner (unless it's a dinner party or full-dress occasion), tend to call that 'supper' (which for working class people is a couple of cream crackers before going to bed). The latter persist in calling their midday snack 'dinner' and their evening meal 'tea', even if they don't drink any tea with it and if it is from the same Delia Smith or Jamie Oliver cookbook that the middle classes use.
You have summarised my experience of meals as a child of working class Lancastrians living in the South, including the cream crackers and cheese before bed ![[Smile]](smile.gif) I still mostly use dinner and tea, to the exasperation of my soundly middle class husband and the amusement of my kids.
My kids seem to have become bilingual in posh and normal, and can refer to "lunch", "dinner" and "tea" quite freely. Somehow son of a Blackburn-raised postman I and daughter of Oxford 1st class MA Electrical Engineer she and the hybrid offspring manage to cope with the multiplicity of forms.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Anglo Catholic Relict
Shipmate
# 17213
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Posted
There seems to be a lot of variation around meals. Mine are a mixture of working class from my upbringing, and middle class from - well, everything since then.
The easiest is breakfast; this is in the morning (usually), either on getting up or after returning from Mass.
Lunch is at lunchtime; midday. Very often a sandwich or salad. An elaborate meal is never lunch. At school we had 'dinner' at midday, and it was the same at home when I was small, but I don't use that any more.
Tea is at teatime; any time between five and seven or so. Again, never a very elaborate or heavy meal.
High tea is a specific form of tea; sandwiches, cake, toast, scones, jam, cream, tea. This is a very useful and under-rated meal, perfect for people you want to spend time with, but don't really want to cook for. I think it is a summer meal, though. High tea after dark in December would be miserable.
Dinner is either Sunday afternoon, prepared after Church, or a more elaborate evening meal. If inviting friends for dinner, that will always be evening; 8 or 9pm, unless on a Sunday, when it could be any time between 3pm and 9pm.
And I think it is still true that if invited anywhere for a meal at 3pm, it is better to be 15 minutes late than 15 minutes early. Everyone aims to be not the first to arrive, nor the last; if three cars roll up together, half an hour late, then everyone is happy.
Similarly, everyone will stay on afterwards into the evening, chatting happily, until one car-load announces that they are on their way. Suddenly everyone else will discover that they were just about to start to leave as well; nobody wants to be the last guest left behind.
[ 20. August 2013, 12:52: Message edited by: Anglo Catholic Relict ]
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
High tea is a specific form of tea; sandwiches, cake, toast, scones, jam, cream, tea. This is a very useful and under-rated meal, perfect for people you want to spend time with, but don't really want to cook for. I think it is a summer meal, though. High tea after dark in December would be miserable.
Not if it included a hot savoury like scrambled eggs, welsh rarebit, smoked haddock with a poached egg, leftover pie from lunch, or beans or sardines on toast, followed by buttered crumpets or toasted teacakes before the bread and butter and jam or honey and cakes. In summer it could include a simple salad with cold meat or pork pie. It was a working class substantial meal east of the pond. I gather from various articles that outside these shores, and up the class ladder it has become more genteel. Pity. One of my favourite meals. I could sustain myself on a large breakfast (in a Scottish hotel I remember, we had porage AND kipper or fried eggs and bacon AND toast and marmalade - I was a teenager then) and a high tea with no other input. Possibly a little late supper of a hot milky drink and a biscuit or two.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
The references to "middle class" within posts make me say that in Canada, everyone seems to think they are middle class. The terms "upper class" and "lower class" don't tend to get used. "Rich" and "poor" or "poverty" seem to be used in place of those, always counterpointed with "middle class".
Though there is other old terminology: blue collar and white collar jobs. But usually now it is said to be "in the trades" or "professional". or the last plumber we had in told me "I work for a living", with the "unlike you" unstated.
Do Americans, Australians, Kiwis use the terms "upper class" and "lower class"? I don't recall so, but such things haven't been the topics of conversations with people we've met. My last such international discussion in person was about cheese, gouda actually.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
I would judge supper as the main evening meal to be a usage of the English upper-middle classes, not the generality of middle class people. So it would be the horsey, county set (pronouncing "supper" as if it were spelt "sapper") or perhaps the Islington chatterati.
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001
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Anglo Catholic Relict
Shipmate
# 17213
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
High tea is a specific form of tea; sandwiches, cake, toast, scones, jam, cream, tea. This is a very useful and under-rated meal, perfect for people you want to spend time with, but don't really want to cook for. I think it is a summer meal, though. High tea after dark in December would be miserable.
Not if it included a hot savoury like scrambled eggs, welsh rarebit, smoked haddock with a poached egg, leftover pie from lunch, or beans or sardines on toast, followed by buttered crumpets or toasted teacakes before the bread and butter and jam or honey and cakes. In summer it could include a simple salad with cold meat or pork pie. It was a working class substantial meal east of the pond. I gather from various articles that outside these shores, and up the class ladder it has become more genteel. Pity. One of my favourite meals.
That all sounds marvellous, but would not count as high tea to me; that would be tea. (Sorry!!)
quote:
I could sustain myself on a large breakfast (in a Scottish hotel I remember, we had porage AND kipper or fried eggs and bacon AND toast and marmalade - I was a teenager then) and a high tea with no other input. Possibly a little late supper of a hot milky drink and a biscuit or two.
I agree about supper; this is either cereal or a very light snack before bed.
I tend not to use supper to mean dinner.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
High tea is a specific form of tea; sandwiches, cake, toast, scones, jam, cream, tea. This is a very useful and under-rated meal, perfect for people you want to spend time with, but don't really want to cook for. I think it is a summer meal, though. High tea after dark in December would be miserable.
Not if it included a hot savoury like scrambled eggs, welsh rarebit, smoked haddock with a poached egg, leftover pie from lunch, or beans or sardines on toast, followed by buttered crumpets or toasted teacakes before the bread and butter and jam or honey and cakes. In summer it could include a simple salad with cold meat or pork pie. ..
You have just made me drool all over my keyboard!
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
No prophet: Regarding the class structure in Canada, I keep chanting this little rhyme I learnt when I were but a lad:
In Toronto, there are no classes
Only the Masseys and the masses
Vincent Massey was the last of the Masseys*, and our Governor-General from 1952-1959. Of him, when he was Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, The Duke of Norfolk (created 1483) said:
Fine fellow, Vincent, but he does make one feel a savage.
*His brother, Raymond, no slouch as an actor, was mildly famous in the United States, but it was felt he rather let the side down.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
You have just made me drool all over my keyboard! [/QB]
Imagine how I felt typing it....
And I'm supposedly on a low calorie day.
The various sites I checked online about high tea do refer to the differences in meaning in various places. There is a class difference, and a place difference, and a difference in London hotels who call what everyone else here calls afternoon tea, with sandwiches, High Tea because that's what tourists think it is.
When I read up, I was interested to find, for the first time, reference to Low Tea, supposedly so because it was partaken of while sitting around low tables in an elegant fashion. High Tea was eaten sitting at a proper table. I am not convinced by this. The low table lot were most likely to speak, I would think, of afternoon tea.
What a minefield.
The Beavers' meal for the Pevensie's is a High Tea in my tradition - and presumably Ulster's.
[ 20. August 2013, 17:36: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Do Americans... use the terms "upper class" and "lower class"? I don't recall so, but such things haven't been the topics of conversations with people we've met.
Occasionally upper class is referred to if it is "Old Money" like the Rockefellers, but lower class is usually working class though most people prefer to think they were middle class. I was raised "upper middle class" - we were not independently wealthy! Today I just consider myself semi-retired, independent of class. I seem to be working less than I did four or five years ago and I have two part-time jobs.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
No prophet: Regarding the class structure in Canada, I keep chanting this little rhyme I learnt when I were but a lad:
In Toronto, there are no classes
Only the Masseys and the masses
Vincent Massey was the last of the Masseys*, and our Governor-General from 1952-1959. Of him, when he was Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, The Duke of Norfolk (created 1483) said:
Fine fellow, Vincent, but he does make one feel a savage.
*His brother, Raymond, no slouch as an actor, was mildly famous in the United States, but it was felt he rather let the side down.
In Toronto one might have added the Eatons -- not now -- and in many cities there was at least one family that would rank as upper. In Winnipeg it would have been the Richardsons, for example, and possibly the Oslers (though not the Norquays, despite their political eminence -- part native, you know).
And I don't think the Masseys outranked the Molsens, who practically owned a seat in the Senate for several decades, which the Masseys never did.
John
[ 20. August 2013, 21:14: Message edited by: John Holding ]
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
How could I forget the Molsons in Quebec?
Now chanting Molson Canaaaadiaaan. Lager Beer!
Curse you, John Holding, for that earworm! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
My kids seem to have become bilingual in posh and normal, and can refer to "lunch", "dinner" and "tea" quite freely.
I tend to swing between usages depending on context and mood, although supper is very definitely something you would eat with a cup of bedtime cocoa.
Does anyone call a packed lunch 'snap' anymore? My granddad used it frequently, but I haven't heard it since school.
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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
Breakfast, lunch and dinner here, and I don't know if I've ever heard anyone in the US using other terms regularly.
Breakfast is always fairly early, though might stretch towards 11 AM on a lazy day, in which case it might become brunch. With most people either at work or in school, lunch is typically not something eaten at home, so rarely the largest meal of the day.
Dinner can be anywhere from 5 to 9 or so, depending on what we are doing. Most families eat with their children, so we would have just one evening meal before their bedtime rather than a later one for grown-ups. Traditionally 6 to 7PM is "dinner time" for the "typical family", if such a thing exists. When the granddaughter is visiting we'll eat at 5 or 5:30, or when it is just the two of us we may wait until it gets dark at 9:30 if there is work to do outside.
Exceptions are major meals such as Christmas Dinner, which may start as early as 2pm. This would be the major meal of the day, and I don't remember ever having a name for a lighter meal later in the evening other than "leftovers".
Sunday Brunch is often a more formal meal, likely at a restaurant, with a mix of breakfast food and more substantial fare. They often open as early as 10 and go until 2 or so, popularly done as a buffet, the idea being a large enough meal to last until dinner. It can be done at home just as well, but not if the cook also wants to go to church or have a lay-in along with everyone else.
Not that there aren't variations - certainly farm meal schedules may be different, as well as those who don't base their life around the 8 - 5 world of modern jobs. But this is the common expectation as far as I have experienced it in the US.
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mertide
Shipmate
# 4500
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
Does anyone call a packed lunch 'snap' anymore? My granddad used it frequently, but I haven't heard it since school.
In our mining communities, a packed lunch is generally called a crib, which I think derives from Cornish mining.
Posts: 382 | From: Brisbane | Registered: May 2003
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
No prophet: Regarding the class structure in Canada, I keep chanting this little rhyme I learnt when I were but a lad:
In Toronto, there are no classes
Only the Masseys and the masses
Vincent Massey was the last of the Masseys*, and our Governor-General from 1952-1959. Of him, when he was Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, The Duke of Norfolk (created 1483) said:
Fine fellow, Vincent, but he does make one feel a savage.
*His brother, Raymond, no slouch as an actor, was mildly famous in the United States, but it was felt he rather let the side down.
In Toronto one might have added the Eatons -- not now -- and in many cities there was at least one family that would rank as upper. In Winnipeg it would have been the Richardsons, for example, and possibly the Oslers (though not the Norquays, despite their political eminence -- part native, you know).
And I don't think the Masseys outranked the Molsens, who practically owned a seat in the Senate for several decades, which the Masseys never did.
John
And Boston had its "Brahmins" as in the verse:
quote:
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mertide:
quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
Does anyone call a packed lunch 'snap' anymore? My granddad used it frequently, but I haven't heard it since school.
In our mining communities, a packed lunch is generally called a crib, which I think derives from Cornish mining.
And the time for lunch is called a "crib break".
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Morlader
Shipmate
# 16040
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Posted
A packed lunch in Cornish is "kroust".
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.. to utmost west.
Posts: 858 | From: Not England | Registered: Nov 2010
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
[LanguageGeek]
Cognate Welsh 'Crwst' - pastry. I suspect it's a borrowing from English 'Crust'
[/LanguageGeek]
Where's Carys when you need her?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Anglo Catholic Relict
Shipmate
# 17213
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
[LanguageGeek]
Cognate Welsh 'Crwst' - pastry. I suspect it's a borrowing from English 'Crust'
[/LanguageGeek]
Where's Carys when you need her?
OED says crust is either direct from Latin crusta or via OF crouste; hard shell, outer case, etc.
Posts: 585 | Registered: Jul 2012
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
How could I forget the Molsons in Quebec?
Now chanting Molson Canaaaadiaaan. Lager Beer!
Curse you, John Holding, for that earworm!
Today Toronto has the Westons. Let's not speak about what earns you a seat in the Senate.... ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Gideon
Apprentice
# 17676
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Morlader:
A packed lunch in Cornish is "kroust".
Up here it's bait. Which may be in a bait box.
Posts: 7 | From: Budleigh Babberton | Registered: May 2013
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
In Toronto one might have added the Eatons -- not now -- and in many cities there was at least one family that would rank as upper. In Winnipeg it would have been the Richardsons, for example...
In Pasadena, we had the Van Valkenburgs: they actually owned Stately Wayne Manor from the old Batman television programme and whomever owned Millard House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
Referring to the Atlantic as a pond when, in fact, it's an ocean?
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Is there a UK equivalent to "wrong side of the tracks"?
That description originated here because so many towns developed after the railways came through, so that the industries and industrial dwellings were on the "freight" side of the yards, while the business people lived on the "station" side of the tracks.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Angloid
Shipmate
# 159
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Posted
It's a common expression here too. Although most of our towns predate the railways, nevertheless when it came the railway line often marked a division between the desirable and less desirable areas.
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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!
Posts: 12927 | From: The Pool of Life | Registered: May 2001
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Is there a UK equivalent to "wrong side of the tracks"?
We say that in the UK too.
Of course, the "wrong side" is on the other side of the tracks in the UK compared to the US.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
So what did we say before the railways? I can't believe, given the class-consciousness of British society, that there wasn't some expression that placed people by their place of origin. Wrong side of the cart track?
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
Below the salt.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
I would suspect that the equivalent term wasn't usable until the Industrial Revolution. Before that time, most of the country lived in villages or small towns when not purely rural, and the markers of the "ins" and the "outs" weren't as clear.
The railways (and, maybe the canals) allowed for worker-separation from the rest.
"Beyond the Pale" indicates a version of that attitude, but it is more racist/imperialist than class-oriented
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Garasu
Shipmate
# 17152
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Posted
Below the salt, maybe?
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"Could I believe in the doctrine without believing in the deity?". - Modesitt, L. E., Jr., 1943- Imager.
Posts: 889 | From: Surrey Heath (England) | Registered: Jun 2012
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Two out of three cat - posters say 'below the salt': but that is an indication of current status. Was there an expression dealing with origin?
I can think of arriviste, upstart, counter-jumper for those considered to have moved out of their social class, but not immediately of an expression for what that class was. Though there were opprobrious term for particular trades - like 'prick louse' for a tailor.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
I would suspect that the equivalent term wasn't usable until the Industrial Revolution. Before that time, most of the country lived in villages or small towns when not purely rural, and the markers of the "ins" and the "outs" weren't as clear.
The railways (and, maybe the canals) allowed for worker-separation from the rest.
"Beyond the Pale" indicates a version of that attitude, but it is more racist/imperialist than class-oriented
Beyond the pale was a phrase I heard a lot as a child, for a person who was just not acceptable, but it wasn’t used in a racist way. It was often used about somebody who had done something really wrong, 'He's put himself beyond the pale'
It has it’s origins in the paling used for fencing. So somebody who was beyond the pale was an outsider, somebody from beyond the boundary of our safe space.
Posts: 1905 | From: the back of beyond | Registered: Jan 2009
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Yes it is racist but not the way you think! That is it has nothing to do with the colour of a persons skin.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
The origin of "beyond the pale" is not a paling fence as you describe it. The Pale was the area in Ireland immediately under English control and security. The areas beyond the Pale were under the control of the Anglo-Norman-Irish families, the Butlers, Ormondes and their ilk, and were said to be uncivilised and lawless.
[ 23. August 2013, 21:57: Message edited by: Gee D ]
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Two out of three cat - posters say 'below the salt': but that is an indication of current status. Was there an expression dealing with origin?
I can think of arriviste, upstart, counter-jumper for those considered to have moved out of their social class, but not immediately of an expression for what that class was.
Social climbers, nouveau riche... If you had to work for a living, instead of having inherited or married money, you could be looked down upon for being "in trade".
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
The origin of "beyond the pale" is not a paling fence as you describe it. The Pale was the area in Ireland immediately under English control and security. The areas beyond the Pale were under the control of the Anglo-Norman-Irish families, the Butlers, Ormondes and their ilk, and were said to be uncivilised and lawless.
The phrase is older than that
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beyond-the-pale.html
Posts: 1905 | From: the back of beyond | Registered: Jan 2009
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
The phrase is older than that
Your like says the Irish Pale was there in the 14th century; first use of the words in the literal sense (with no explicit reference to Ireland) 17th century. First use of the words in a metaphorical sense unstated.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Anglo Catholic Relict
Shipmate
# 17213
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
The phrase is older than that
Your like says the Irish Pale was there in the 14th century; first use of the words in the literal sense (with no explicit reference to Ireland) 17th century. First use of the words in a metaphorical sense unstated.
OED quotes Pale as fence or boundary (from Latin Palus; stake) used as early as 1330.
Use as a boundary or restriction which has been crossed or breached dates from c 1400
The meaning of 'a district or territory within determined grounds, or subject to a particular jurisdiction', first cited from 1560; 'the Frenche King went out of his own pale', 1600; 'The Tarquininans overran all the marches of the Roman pale.'
Pale relating to colour or complexion is from a different source; via Old French palle or pale from Latin pallidum.
Posts: 585 | Registered: Jul 2012
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Two out of three cat - posters say 'below the salt': but that is an indication of current status. Was there an expression dealing with origin?
I can think of arriviste, upstart, counter-jumper for those considered to have moved out of their social class, but not immediately of an expression for what that class was. Though there were opprobrious term for particular trades - like 'prick louse' for a tailor.
"Nabob" springs to mind. It refers to those made their fortunes in India with the East India Company and retired to England. Made of course ranges in meaning from robbed, plundered, pillaged and defrauded to merely hard bargaining and sharp dealing.
The word was in use by the early 18th Century.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
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Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
The phrase is older than that
Your like says the Irish Pale was there in the 14th century; first use of the words in the literal sense (with no explicit reference to Ireland) 17th century. First use of the words in a metaphorical sense unstated.
it was france that was th 14th century 'and France (the Pale of Calais, which was formed as early as 1360).'
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