Plates of meat: How we use carnivorous dishes and fish in sayings

Q. Where's the beef

A. Taken from a 1984 Wendy hamburgers advert, 'where's the beef ' now means 'cut the waffle and get to the meat of what you're trying to say'. In the ad an old lady bought a burger from a non-Wendy restaurant, which consisted of bun and salad and not much else. 'Where's the beef ' she said to the manager.

Q. What other beefy things do we have

A.

Beefcake: muscular blokes

Beefeaters: the Yeomen of the Guard, formed in 1485, and now, still wearing Tudor costume, the Warders of the Tower of London.

Q. And ham

A.

A ham: a corny, amateurish actor, and, in an extended sense, anyone who over-reacts to a situation. Perhaps from 'The Ham-fat Man', an old minstrel song, or...

Ham-fisted: clumsy.

Q. Pork

A.

Porkbarrel: an American expression for Federal funds being made available for local improvements as a result of influence brought to bear by a local congressman in order to win favour with the electorate. It is also refers to any reward for loyal party service. Deriving from slavery days, the term comes from the practice of slaves being required to assemble at the pork barrel to await their rations.

To pork: a vulgar term for copulation.

Q. Sausage

A.

Silly sausage: as it sounds.

Not a sausage: skint, deriving from rhyming slang, where 'bangers and mash' means cash.

Q. Lamb

A.

Mutton (or sheep) dressed as lamb: dressed inappropriately, especially an older woman dressing too young.

Q. Meat

A.

Plates of meat: rhyming slang for feet.

One man's meat is another man's poison: what's good for you isn't necessarily good for me.

Strong meat: something that arouses fear or revulsion; something difficult to stomach.

Meat and drink: something pleasurable.

After meat, mustard: something that would have been welcome earlier has arrived too late and is no longer needed.

Meatspace: the physical rather than cyber world.

Q. Fish

A.

Cry stinking fish: to belittle one's own achievement or offering, in the sense of a fishmonger offering rotten fish for sale.

He eats no fish: an Elizabethan expression denoting an honest man. Protestants had stopped the Roman Catholic practice of eating fish on a Friday. So if one ate fish, one was a Catholic and therefore suspect.

To have other fish to fry: other, better or more important things to do.

Neither fish, flesh nor fowl: neither one thing nor the other.

Q. And 'eat crow'

A.

A North American version of 'eat humble pie', to do something distasteful or humiliating. Allegedly it comes from an incident during the Anglo-American War (1812-14) when an American inadvertently crossed the British lines and shot down a crow. A British soldier came upon the American and forced him, on fear of death, to eat a bite of the raw crow as a punishment for trespassing on British territory. After the bite was duly taken, the soldier gave the American back his gun and sent him on his way. However, the American decided to get his own back, and forced the soldier to eat the rest of the bird at gunpoint.

If you know of any more phrases about dead-animal foodstuffs tell us

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By Simon Smith