Pull up your socks!

[Conchita]

Another proof that I learn as I teach is this idiom that came up in a class yesterday. The full sentence was: I wish he’d pull his socks up a bit!

Now I’ll have a funny way to tell a student to work harder.

[Molly]

Not sure it would be funny if said this way, which it often is:

“If you don’t pull your socks up, you will find yourself repeating the year.”

[Skrej]

That’s even funnier, not less funny.

[Yankee]

Hi Conchita

That is a fun idiom, and it’s also one that strikes me as being “very British”.

On this side of the pond, I would expect “pull up your socks” to have a literal meaning. :lol:
.

[Alan]

Hi Conchita,

To add to your stock of ‘socks’ images how about:put a sock in it or sock it to them or blow/knock your socks off?

Alan

[Molly]

That’s even funnier, not less funny.

For whom?

[Conchita]

@Molly

That’s even funnier, not less funny.

For whom?

Come on, Molly, kick back – it’s Friday night!

Anyway, try taking the phrase literally. Until I did so myself, I saw nothing funny in your sentence, either.

Thanks, Skrej and Molly, for the good laugh! :lol:

[Conchita]

@Alan

Hi Conchita,

To add to your stock of ‘socks’ images how about:put a sock in it or sock it to them or blow/knock your socks off?

Alan

Thanks, Alan, for the interesting sock idioms. Actually, the word ‘sock’ is funny enough by itself, and not only in English (remember the French expression for very weak coffee? I mentioned it in this old thread: sock juice).

And here’s another one I like:

Bless your cotton socks!

[Conchita]

@Yankee

Hi Conchita

That is a fun idiom, and it’s also one that strikes me as being “very British”.

On this side of the pond, I would expect “pull up your socks” to have a literal meaning. :lol:
.

Funnily enough, look what I’ve found:

Go figure (I openly admit to copying this phrase from you)!

[Ralf]

Hi yas,

Haven’t you seen ‘Snatch’ with Brad Pitt. Pull your socks up!

Bullet Tooth Tony: [from another room] Avi? Pull your socks up!
[Avi, Vinny, Sol and Tyrone stare at one another, then fall to the floor. Tony shoots through the wall and into the room, wounding Boris]

[Yankee]

.
Good find, Ralf! I haven’t seen that movie, though. Do you happen to know whether Avi actually did pull his socks up before getting down to the business of bullet-dodging? :lol:
.

[Ralf]

Hi ducked and didn’t get shot (unlike Boris the Russian who was able to take a whole cartload of bullets)

[Yankee]

.
You’ve made me curious now. I may be forced to rent that movie this weekend. :lol:

I assume you’ve seen the movie. It sounds like all or most of it takes place in London. Is that right? And it looks like Brad Pitt plays an Irish guy? How well does he do the accent? I mean, is the accent believable?
.

[Skrej]

Pitt doesn’t do an Irish accent, he does a Pikey accent, and he’s nearly 100% undecipherable. I had to put the subtitles on just to understand Pitt.

I personally couldn’t judge the authenticity, but apparently he’s gotten quite a bit of acclaim for how well he pulled it off. By all accounts he did a bang up job on it. All I know is I couldn’t make out 1 word in 15, and he talks about 110 miles per hour. It sure was convincing for me, but like I said, I’ve nothing to compare it too.

Here’s a sample. Good luck!

By the way, it’s a hysterical movie. I may have to re-rent it now.

[Molly]

And there’s “Hand off c*cks, hands on socks!” :oops:

[Ralf]

@yankee

I assume you’ve seen the movie. It sounds like all or most of it takes place in London. Is that right? And it looks like Brad Pitt plays an Irish guy? How well does he do the accent? I mean, is the accent believable?

Yes, it takes place in London. I’ve probably seen it more than any other film, at least ten times! And Brad Pitt does an authentic job in terms of speaking like a mumbling scum bag living in a mobile home - half the time he’s not meant to be intelligible. Great actor!

@Skrej

Pitt doesn’t do an Irish accent, he does a Pikey accent, and he’s nearly 100% undecipherable. I had to put the subtitles on just to understand Pitt.

I personally couldn’t judge the authenticity, but apparently he’s gotten quite a bit of acclaim for how well he pulled it off. By all accounts he did a bang up job on it.

The best thing about Brad Pitt here is that he invented the Pikey accent. Before this film the term ‘Pikey’ didn’t even exist, and these days the whole of Ireland is full of them. Mothers give their sons good advice like ‘That girl’s a proper Pikey and she speaks like a tramp, best stay away from her!’

[Molly]

Before this film the term ‘Pikey’ didn’t even exist,

Pikey is a pejorative slang term used primarily in England, originally referring to Travellers, sometimes mistakenly called “Gypsies”. The Oxford English Dictionary traced its use in 1837 by Times, “referring to strangers harvesting in the Isle of Sheppey island”. Later that century it meant a “turnpike traveller” or vagabond. Recently, its use was associated with Irish Travellers and non-Roma Gypsies.[1][2] In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe, with disdain, a class of people regardless of heritage or abode, who are “squalid, disreputable, vulgar”(OED), untrustworthy and thought of as being one of the lowest classes in society.[3]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikey

[Ralf]

It didn’t exist in every day usage as performed by native speakers (in Ireland). But I’m sure that people would have used it had google existed

[Yankee]

Hi Ralf

I’ve seen the movie “Snatch” now. OMG! Brad Pitt is impossible to understand most of the time. :lol:

I thought this little exchange was funny:

Bullet Tooth Tony: A bookie’s got blagged last night.
Avi: Blagged? Tony, speak English. I thought this country spawned the f*cking language, and so far nobody seems to speak it.

(I wouldn’t have understood the word “blagged” either. I looked that word up, and I guess it means “robbed” in the context, right?)

And is Tony’s use of the present perfect with “last night” typical in the UK? Or is it some sort of “London gangster slang”? I can’t imagine anyone saying “A bookie’s got robbed last night.” in AmE.
.

[Conchita]

Amy, perhaps “a bookie’s” was just meant as “a bookmaker’s” (as we say butcher’s/baker’s, etc.), i.e. in the sense of the bookie’s shop/place/business.