Quizzes & Puzzles36 mins ago
Who Is?
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Flaming Nora! I say it, someone on tv just said it! Who on earth was/is she?
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There's more than one theory.
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Quizmonster goes with the Cockney theory. (Well he did over a decade ago, anyway!):
http:// www.the answerb ank.co. uk/Hist ory/Que stion55 093.htm l
See here:
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Quizmonster goes with the Cockney theory. (Well he did over a decade ago, anyway!):
http://
here's nothing especially giddy about aunts. The word has been applied as an intensifier to all sorts of things - giddy-headed, the giddy ox, etc. Shakespeare used the word 30 or more times in his plays and associated it with both Goths and geese. He seems to have noticed that giddy works best with other 'G' words, although he missed out on the only other 'giddy' phrase to have lasted apart from giddy aunt, that is, the giddy goat.
While it is the 'giddy goat' it is always my 'Giddy aunt!', that is, it is used as an exclamation rather than a description. The first use I can find of 'my giddy aunt' is in The journal of a disappointed man, 1919, by W. N. P. Barbellion (the pseudonym of the English author Bruce Cummings).
Of course the giddiest aunt of them all is the character in Charley's Aunt - Brandon Thomas' farce, which was first performed in 1892. In the play Charley Whyckham's aunt is said to be "from where the nuts come from" (Brazil). The farce revolves around her impersonation by a man, but I can't find any reference in the play to 'her' as giddy.
While it is the 'giddy goat' it is always my 'Giddy aunt!', that is, it is used as an exclamation rather than a description. The first use I can find of 'my giddy aunt' is in The journal of a disappointed man, 1919, by W. N. P. Barbellion (the pseudonym of the English author Bruce Cummings).
Of course the giddiest aunt of them all is the character in Charley's Aunt - Brandon Thomas' farce, which was first performed in 1892. In the play Charley Whyckham's aunt is said to be "from where the nuts come from" (Brazil). The farce revolves around her impersonation by a man, but I can't find any reference in the play to 'her' as giddy.