Vinegar Strokes

[number8]

Does anybody know where the expression vinegar strokes comes from?

[Rabelais]

I think it is an indirect allusion to the facial expression as though tasting vinegar

[number8]

Thank you - your answer has just caused much hilarity in the office, with some people trying the faces. Excellent tonic for a Friday afternoon.

[geordie jon]

Or more the idea of ejaculating vinegar - A much worse face

[Quizmonster]

'Facial expression' is, doubtless, an amusing idea in this context, but - given that an earlier version referred to 'gravy' rather than 'vinegar' - it is almost certainly an irrelevance.

When you lay out food at Sunday lunch, you place meat, potatoes, vegetables, horseradish sauce or whatever on your plate before, finally, pouring some gravy to round it all off. Similarly, when you get your packet of fish and chips home, you pour your tea, butter your bread, scatter salt and, finally, sprinkle some vinegar to round it all off.

Both processes, in other words, find their completion in one form or another of "anointing with liquid". It is not too hard to see, therefore, how the completion of a rather different act - which ends in the same way - took its euphemistic vocabulary from the realm of food!

[shybearuk]

As an afterthought, could it also be to do with the way that vinegar comes out of the bottle? Rather than a continuous stream, you get several short 'spurts', for want of a better word.

[LARGE_DOG]

vinegar