= The colour "claret" resembles the red hue of Bordeaux wine. It has become a slang term for blood, as in "tapping the claret" meaning giving someone a bloody nose.

I am intrigued by colloquialisms and love knowing their origins , I'm quite familiar with British colloquialisms and would like to hear some from other countries................. So come on, share the wealth!

Rochester NY
"Spider" is the old style black iron frying pan.

This was posted by Abracadabra in another thread a while back:

I believe that we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

Then I started wondering who the hell started that saying.

Well, fortunately in this day and age of the Internet I was able to look it up within seconds. It appears that an author by the name of I. Windslow Ayer first coined the saying in an 1865 history book.

Of course the saying may have already been around prior to that and Ayer may have simply been the first person to actually jot it down. Who knows?

Also Ayer didn't suggest that he (or she) was going to hell in a handbasket, but instead was threatening to send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket. I guess this was written in the south against the north in the American civil war.

So the next time you hear about sending someone to hell in a handbasket you'll know that it was the confederates that wanted to send the Yankees to hell in a handbasket and failed to do so.

So if someone threatens to send you to hell in a handbasket tell them that didn't work.

Isn't the Internet fun?

Abdabs (Noun) Terror, the frights, nerves. Often heard as the screaming abdabs. Also very occasionally 'habdabs'.

'Smoking a fag" means quite the different thing in the UK than it does the US.

It does.