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The return of the facial nightwear game
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Forget names, faces? Embarrassed by your poor command of English? Have you encountered a mysterious and possibly very rude phrase, but you're afraid to ask what it meant? This is the place for you. Leave such face pyjamas here, and let our panel of resident experts laugh at them.
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Aussie term for one who wrestles crocodiles for the amusement of tourists.

Namibian Knot

Something I'd rather not know to do with circumcision rituals.

Is this now a Moribund Entertainment?

By that, do you mean
a Norwegian Blue?
A Norweign Blue and a moribund entertainment are referring to the activity but as seen from across the gender divide.
A norweign blue was a prank developed by the female students of Oslo University. During rag week they stood by traffic lights in the buff, when the front cars stoppped male drivers were then offered a bucket of cold water, a soapy sponge and 30 seconds to rub the student down.
What Raak refered to is the jealous wives in the passenger seat death like, arms folded and grim ashen faced not looking.

My brother who is more widely travelled is rumoured to have had a great time with a Swindon plank is this possible?

Only if one is into necrophilia.

Someone I met in a bar urged me to Repurpose my assets. I backed away slowly -- did I do the right thing?

I think it is highly likely that you did precisely the right thing. It's a a gay chatup line.

Years ago I was offered a Rum Baba. I had no idea how to conceal my awful ignorance.

A Rum Baba, at least if you come from Wales, New Zealand or Australia, is a strange (read very strange) sheep. Whilst we are on the subject of strange phrases, I was up the local shops the other day and one of the proprietors mentiond a Virtual Ending. Did I hear this correctly, or is there something that I am missing?
You're not missing anything, although someone else may be. A Virtual Ending is when two people in bed together amicably decide, for whatever reason, that it's not going to work, and just have a snuggle instead.

I recently heard a birdwatcher mention sighting a Trunnion's Warbler. It's not listed in any reference book I've looked at. What is it?

Twitchers' slang originally for a magpie, now applied to any common bird. An amateur birdwatcher called Goately Trunnion famously excited the ornithological world with reports of a pair of Pied Blue-winged Azalea Warblers (thought to be extinct) in his Wimbledon garden. They turned out to be magpies, to Trunnion's eternal shame.

Brighton Snack?

A Brighton Snack is a posh name for a visit to the Massage Parlour.

Gammon Ears

I've come across the word "spotty" in some British literature. At times it seems to mean "pimply-faced" but other times something closer to "cowardly." Is this Brit slang? What is the etymology - anything to do with smallpox?
If, despite being generally quick on the uptake, you unexpectedly commit a social faux pas because you have competely misunderstood something, you can be said to have "gammon ears". An example might be mistaking a foolish word game for a genuine etymological discussion. (I have never heard of "spotty" meaning "cowardly" though.)

Someone once complimented me on my Cat's toenails. Should I be offended?
On the contrary. The phrase 'Cat's Toenails' ranks highly in the Idiomatic Chart, just below 'the Bee's Knees' if I recall, and considerably higher than 'the Dog's Bollocks'.

Talking of which, I am experiencing some bonding difficulties with my boyfriend's schnauzer. A West Byfleet Purfling Cobnut has been recommended but must confess to being too embarrassed to purchase one. Should I be?

West Byfleet Purfling Cobnuts are "Cobnuts" made by Purfling Ltd, a veterinarian toy manufacturer based in West Byfleet. Cobnuts are very much like scented doughnuts that can be hung from your belt. If you do this, your boyfriend's schnauzer will be your friend for life. The downside is that you will have to put up with smelling like a dog's arse.

I recently won a raffle. Someone referred to me as a Poncho Flinger. At the time I thought it was a complement...?
One who pretends never to have won anything, never to enter competitions or lotteries, but regularly receives prizes. My mother was one such. The expression derives from the habits of Poncho-brandishing Mexican entrepreneur Don Garcia Alfonso Alhambra, the founder of the Alhambra cinema chain, who ran well-publicised weekly raffles in his cinemas but always won the raffles himself under various assumed names.

Pencil Sharpener

Circumcision knife.

Black & Decker

. . . is the name of the duo recently formed by celebrity redheads Cilla Black [of Liverpewl] and Carol Decker [of T'Pau]. Their debut rap single, produced and mixed by DJ Workmate, will be released in time for the Christmas season and will be titled 'Screw you - bosch bosch'.

On a recent caravan holiday, I was offered Camping Gaz. As it was my last day, I demurred. Was I wise?

[Chalky] You sure that wasn't Camping Gazza, a time-wasting caravan game where people do combination impressions of two famous people? So named for the first one attempted -- Lionel Blair + Paul Gascoigne.

What about chippolata slogging?
A reduced form of the game Hide the Salami (qv)

Aberdeen Galloper?

This term refers to someone who enjoys riding horses wearing only a kilt to protect their modesty. Saddles for Aberdeen Galloping are usually covered in metal studs, and Gallopers usually whip themselves while they are riding while screaming, "Oh yes!" in high-pitched squeals.

In the United States, an Aberdeen Galloper more usually refers to someone who has participated in the annual race between all three Aberdeens, in Washington, South Dakota and Maryland. No form of motor transport may be used during this race - any violations of this rule lead to being summarily shot by the race officials.

In the meantime, what is a meaty palm?

One which is holding a salami.

Who goes nogging the nog, and why?

The reason, Raak, that no-one has bothered to reply to your "Who goes nogging the nog" entry is that the answer is so obvious that we cannot bring ourselves to utter it.

Moving swiftly on... I used to think that Revolving Door was rhyming slang, but could never conceive of a rhyme that fit the context in which the expression was (with rolling eyes and nudges) used. Now I'm not so sure...

Hmmm - your secondary instincts may be spot-on . . . only because a 'revolving door' is an alternative [rhyming slang] yet polite way of describing a 'Roger' [bruising nudges, grossly exaggerated winks and embarrassing stretchy mouthshape] short for 'Roger Moore' - he of the questionable raised eyebrow and much else besides.

OK. What about this weight-lifting mallarkey then? I am told that a Clean and Jerk technique is desirable if one wishes to go from strength to strength?

Yes, "clean and jerk" is now a weightlifting term (to lift and successfully support the weights are two different levels -- one at shoulder-height, or the "clean", the other with arms straight above the head, the "jerk"), but it came from the original weightlifters -- Eastern European immigrant women to the US. They often had 10 or more children in the fambly (accent declared), and as such the laundry load was wont to be 100lbs or greater, so the mother had to do a similar technique to carry it.

The reverse term could also apply to the fathers after the 5th or 6th kid....

I was having a drink with a few friends from Physics when one of them pointed to a nice-looking girl, but said "he once gave her out for hitting the ball twice." Was I right in choosing to avoid her then?
Yes "hitting the ball twice " is a reference to somebody who when first met was fantastically beautiful and well turned out but after a couple of dates turns into a smelly unkempt wretched figure who you wouldn't look twice at. The phrase originates from the story of Cinderella who arrived at the ball looking like a princess but by the time she left had already lost a shoe and arrived home looking like a tramp, one can only imagine what a subsequent trip to the ball would have resulted in.

Moisten the sand and old Bedouin saying but what was it about?
Before we stray too far (because then it will cease to be funny), from the subject of female weightlifters, the 'clean and jerk' is, of course, not the only discipline. It was reported, perhaps apocriphally, that an Olympic T.V. commentator had once described a Bulgarian girl as having a 'world-class snatch'.
To 'Moisten the sand' could well refer to the Bedoiun behaviour of staggering out of the Camel and Scimitar at chucking-out time and finding no taxis of the desert waiting, chooses to relieve himself behind the bus-stop at the nearest oasis.
I was somewhat perterbed the other day to hear something or other described as 'like throwing a Woodbine up Broad St' What do you think they were talking about?
Broad Street is a street in the middle of Oxford, and is indeed broad. The phrase refers the traditional May Day festival held there, which would commence at dawn with a competition to see who could throw a bunch of fragrant woodbine herbs up Broad Street the farthest. This would be followed by a race to sweep the resulting pile of woodbine all the way along the street. In the days of horse-drawn transport, this also served a useful function in cleaning and deodorising the road of unwelcome material. So metaphorically, throwing a woodbine up Broad Street means any way of transforming a necessary chore into a joyful activity. Try dropping this phrase into your next management meeting: "Let's throw a woodbine up Broad Street on this one and see where it drops."

What are hot boots and cold boots?

The remedy for cold feet and warm feet, respectively. D'OH.

In other words, "hot boots" are anything, be it an actual object, argument or other psychological device, used to convince someone to do something that s/he is scared to do (has "cold feet" about). Whereas "cold boots" is pretty much the reverse - anything, be it an actual object, argument or other psychological device, used to try and either extricate or at the very least calm down someone who *has* jumped into a situation feet-first only to find it "too hot to handle". Very often the person who was too scared to get into whatever situation it was, turns out to have been right in the first place, and giving them the cold-boots treatment is the only remedy for your own mistake of having given them the hot-boots treatment in the first place. The two concepts most often crop up in arguments between friends over a romantic relationship that one of them is either (a) not yet involved in, and too scared to start, or (b) has gotten involved in, found out that they were *right* to have been too scared to start but it's too late now as it's already started, and wants to try to find a way of reasoning themselves out of it again becuase they can't handle it: and it is the best mate that provides the warm- and cold-boots treatment successively and ill-advisedly ;-)

In the days when my father was a computer programmer, he would sometimes say that a hard day's work had in fact been turd-varnishing.

Sir/Madam, should your father have really said that, then he was dredging the pond of poor taste! The term turd varnishing is one step lower than 'brown nosing'; it refers to those moments in an office when everything is up-to-date and staff are at a loose end. (Ed: Yeah, right!) Most go to the pub. Others, the 'turd varnishers', head off to the head and take with them 'procedure manuals', a copy of the remarks section of the most recently purchased software core, the company 'directions' manifesto or copy of the latest speech made by their Project Manager, supposedly to 'polish their skills'. I'm sure you get the drift.

Now, oddly enough, also gleaned from and I.T. type - what the heck is a Farenheit Burster?

In the depths of the IT department wallows the BOFH and the ever present PFY. And it to this latter ungodly creature that we must turn our attention. Not too bright the the PFY lurks in front of humming screen and servers, surfacing only briefly to ghost into a work area first thing on a Monday morning, 'Tut' three times before removing a computers base unit as the Farenheit Burster looks on in spluttering astonishment.

Next time I go to the beach should I take a scanning basket.

well, Dad used the expression to mean "adding fancy-looking bells and whistles to a product that is in fact, deep down, crap" ;-)
that last comment addressed to Dunx by the way.
um Dujon not Dunx. *shoots self in head*

Game on, with Inkspot's scanning basket.

A scanning basket is the latest timesaving supermarket idea which scans the shopping as they are placed in the basket and a running total appears on the handle. It will also scan the shelves and direct you to the special offers and when you reach the checkout it scans your retina and wallet and deducts the amount from your bank account. The trial was discontinued after the baskets were stacked together and went into a neverending loop charging Tesco £28Billion for a small pack of strawberries.

Slipping Toffee tasty or what?
Um while I don't know about slipping toffee could someone explain Frognal twitching to me? I'll get back to the toffee later.
Slipping toffee - only tasty if you get away with it. It was a disparaging term invented around the "Cash for Questions" kind of time - it referred to the brown envelopes of money which bore a passing resemblance to the paper bags which the older politicians remembered taking their pocket-money toffee home in, and the underhand delivery of said envelopes between those involved became known by their disapproving colleagues as "slipping toffee".
Frognal twitching is the state of frustration experienced by a man when he thought he would be invited in by his new girlfriend after walking her home. Related to the expression Finchley Road and Frognal, meaning a couple who are (or are presumed to be) having sexual relations.

What is Double Bassooning?

Apart from painful?
Double Bassooning is a variation on breaking wind similar to "stepping on a duck" whereby one breaks wind on each stride but in this instance two people are involved with one playing the counter melody. An attempt by the Coldstream guards to achieve this on mass was the highlight of the 1964 Trooping the Colour.

Tricycle Ointment can it be trusted to do the job?
I interject with this irrelevance. I went to school in a tiny village north of York (near Castle Howard). The matron (she had a deputy who really was, as I recall, the product of mixing 1 part Hattie Jacques to two parts Nursie from Blackadder) had a magnificent, all-purpose, 'there-that'll-make-it-better-it's-only-a-graze/bruise/burn/headache-so-stop-fussing' medicinal cream specially made up by a pharmacist in Malton, nearby (God alone knows what went into it). The name of this panacea? Trinity Ointment. And as far as I recall, yes - it could be trusted to do the job ... I now return you to your normal programme
Trinity Ointment might well do the job of Tricycle Ointment. The latter is a lubricating and emollifying material for smoothing the axle of the Three Great Turnings of the Wheel of the Dharma; put more prosaically, it is an anti-haemorrhoid cream for monks who must spend many hours sitting in meditation.

Where might one see a Manchester Gallop?

Prefixing a Face Pyjama with the word Manchester traditionally coarsens the thing described. For example "I unscrewed it with a Manchester Spanner" means you used a Hammer. "I knocked it back into place with a Manchester Hammer" means you kicked it, and so on. So, a "Manchester Gallop" must mean one of those stumbling runs with random reels to one side or the other and frequent collisions with road furniture that are popularised by the consumers of Strong Drink.

Portsmouth Kettle

The use of the word Portsmouth in a Face Pyjama is very similar to the use of the word Manchester above. It is used to describe something that is unutterably dull. Obviously a Portsmouth Kettle either needs a good polish or lacks charisma.

But what are Budgerigar Trousers?
Ah ha! You have come to the right man for that information. Back in the Dark Ages, circa 1958, I was heavily involved in the breeding of those delightful little creatures - budgerigars, that is, not trousers. Actually I would have taken on trousers but, in those days, it was nearly impossible to get the zips mated. However, I digress.
The main aim of breeders at that time was to produce a bird which would 'drop it's daks' only for the right mate; it was considered that this would enable the use of multi-species aviaries without the risk of any cross-breed infections. To this end many, many experiments were undertaken and, sadly, in the interest of science, many birds perished. Eventually, being a leading light in this field, I was successful - to a degree anyway. Regrettably, whilst the finished product looked fine and theoretically should have worked, it didn't. It turned out that the male budgies were only 'turned on' when the female produced with the new genes was deceased. So, effectively, the breed died out after only one generation. It became obvious that, instead of producing a budgies gene rouser, I had inadvertently come up with a budgie rigor rouser. This was a spectacular failure which, to my chagrin, has gone down in the annals of the bird breeding community as a 'cheap and seedy' endeavour. Unfortunately it was also picked up by the popular press (in particular the "Parrot Breeders' Bible.") So, with it's wide circulation - and numerous typographical errors - the term which they coined has now entered the common vernacular. I'm sure that most of you would know the phrase (although some are more protected than others) which both sexes use in the pub when a particularly attractive specimen of the opposite sex is sighted wearing a well fitting pair of jeans?
Basically it means that s/he wouldn't be interested in you even if you were dead!

Leaving wild life to itself these days I am now more involved in the 'meaning of everything'. So when I came across an articulated case the other day, I was rather intrigued. Something to do with the law? A strange and mobile computer container? The title of a detective novel? Anybody know?

This is a doctor's discreet euphemism, when speaking in front of the patient, to signify that the patient has a screw loose, is unhinged, a leg short of a trivet, etc.

Speaking of trivets, or perhaps not, what is a trivet screw? I don't see it listed in Machinery's Handbook.

Ah! I think you'll find that should be T-rivet screw, and it's under Screws, Rivet, T-section in most catalogues, but don't ask what they're for. However, as a face pyjama, it carries the connotation of a rather unconventional coupling of human animals of either or both sexes usually in threes, but sometimes in ambitious pairs. I am unwilling to describe the configuration here, but Google should point you to an explicit How-To website.

Soap Sausage

Soap Sausage is anything served up for a meal in any particular popular evening television show. These delicacies serve 3 purposes.
1) To provide something to be thrown in an argument
2) To be a backdrop for a date that doesn't happen(ie, dater spends hours preparing said meal for datee, burning the house down in the process, or at least causing GBH to some poor passer by), and
3) To be on a fork midway between plate and mouth when the argument in scenario 1) breaks out in a public place.

Speaking of trouble, what is a Speke Lexden?
Ah, my dear, you are showing your age. A Speke Lexden is simply a dictionary (including pronunctiations) of "modern" English - i.e. as it is spoke.

I was glancing through one of my wife's specialist magazines the other week and came across the term tipple peak. To be honest I'm not sure whether I mis-read the words but, if not, can anyone help?

You read correctly. I assume this is latest edition of 'Hot Toddy Monthly', the magazine for liqueur coffee connoiseurs. The tipple peak is the small bit of cream on the top of, say, an Irish Cream that ends up on your nose if you glug it down.

Now that you are enlightened, can anyone tell me the purpose of Kemsing Ringers?
hahahahahahahahahaha this is so crap
james is so stupid someone threw a petrol bomb at him and he drank it.
Ah a prime example of a Mornington Wassak. Which brings me on to Kemsing Ringers. Basically it refers to anyone who looks like Albert Kemsing (ie 7 foot 2, bald, jug-eared and a tatoo of an armadillo on his chin).

But what is a Christmas Dixon?
Christmas Dixons are policement on the beat during the shopping season trying to look friendly and avuncular, like the eponymous copper of Dock Green. This is a rather difficult act to pull off nowadays, when they go clad in bullet-proof vests and fluorescent yellow overcoats, with side-handled telescopic truncheons and rigid handcuffs stuffed into their belts.

Would one go to the other Dixons for Purple Headphones?

Certainly not! I think you'd be likely to get slapped should you dare ask for such a thing! Let's just say you'd be more likely to find that sort of, erm, 'entertainment' in, say, Soho or Montmartre or 5 Bradley Road, Peterborough. (Just say Angus sent you...).
Now that I've tipped you off, what is the purpose of an Easter Staverley?
That's an ancient religion. Devotees turn their back on Mecca, whistle three times and pray to their cooking pots. Of course with the advent of modern gas stoves, this particular cult has fallen into decline. I came across a reference to a Hogsbotham in a book I'm reading, but can't for the life of me work out what it is. Can anybody help?
Literally a hogshead's bottom, this means something similar to the modern expression "scraping the bottom of the barrel". A hogsbotham is something so produced.

Perhaps we have reached the hogsbotham of this game? Perhaps the definition of Inverted Nuptials will decide?

A posh name for divorce in which the grounds for separation relate to a so-called "sixty-nine" act performed by one of the partners with NOT the other partner (IYSWIM). Keen mathematicians will immediately perceive that 69 looks the same upside-down as right-way-up.

As to termination, I agree, Raak. But, just as a final question, what's a Mornington Crescent?

*shouts, screams, generally goes wild for gil*
Don't ask me!
a facial game
how's it goin
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what is this that i'm in right now?
hello?
Hello. While you're here - who knows what a drenching collander is used for?
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Girls, have fun, not boys
Right, I'm gonna close this page for a bit.
Want to play? Online Crescenteering lives on at Discord