your feet under my table
Marius Hancu
This seems idiom, doesn't it?
"as you put your feet under my table"
---
The State, Volume 39 - Page 25
North Carolina - 1970
I want you to know that as long as you put your feet under my table,
you're
going to do as I say, because I'm boss in this house.
---
--
Thanks.
Marius Hancu
Donna Richoux
> This seems idiom, doesn't it?
> "as you put your feet under my table"
>
> ---
> The State, Volume 39? - Page 25
> North Carolina - 1970
>
> I want you to know that as long as you put your feet under my table,
> you're
> going to do as I say, because I'm boss in this house.
> ---
Not anything I ever heard myself, but it appears to exist.
The first few words are going to vary, so you'll get more results at
Google Books by focusing only on "your feet under my table". It shows
some with a general sense of paying a visit or coming to dine, and some
from the last twenty years of which I am suspicious (in the sense of
their being more of remembered folk sayings than actual use), but these
have the dignity of some age:
=====
1917
And as long as you put your feet under my table, my son, you're to
remember that I am the head of this house."
1933
GRANDMOTHER : We used to say "You will obey me as long as you have your
feet under my table."
1948
... "Son, as long as you put your feet under my table and eat the food I
earned by the sweat of my brow, you are going to do what I tell you to
do . ...
1952
"And as long as you sleep under my roof and put your feet under my
table, I've got some say-so over you. Is that straight?"
1953
... a conviction that Father somehow is the head of the house -- "As
long as you stick your feet under my table I am boss.
====
In my house, the parental warning to an unruly teen was the other way
around -- "If you [bla bla bla], then THERE'S THE DOOR."
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Don Phillipson
news:80058eec-12b1-42cc...@33g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
> This seems idiom, doesn't it?
> "as you put your feet under my table"
This was standard (proletarian) idiom in England
at least up to 1950, meaning to join the household,
perhaps initially as a casual visitor or paying lodger.
(Cf. shortage of working men's hostels, so that
many poor housewives took in lodgers to help pay
the rent.) If there was a pretty daughter in the
house as well, getting your feet under the table
might lead to more besides.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Peter Moylan
shoes under my bed".
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
the Omrud
I've never heard it exactly like this, but there is a BrE saying: "He's
got his feet under her table", which means that he's just about become
one of the family. In olden days, this indicated that he was going to
marry the daughter of the family.
--
David
Cheryl
I don't think I've heard this particular idiom often, but I had a vague
idea that it meant something like 'make yourself at home'. Clearly, it
has another meaning as well.
The most common phrase I've heard used to indicate someone's running a
household is 'As long as you're under my roof....'. I've heard
variations on that, too, like 'When you've got a place of your own, you
can do things your way' or 'When you're paying all the bills, you can...'
--
Cheryl
HVS
Others have explained what it means; I'd just add that although I
don't recall hearing that particular idiom, the meaning was
immediately clear to me.
It would be the same with any expression implying that someone was
being housed by the speaker, whether or not I'd previously heard
the particular allusion or just made it up: "living under my
roof", "putting your feet under my table", "parking your butt on my
sofa", "hanging your coat in my hallway", or "keeping your
toothbrush in my bathroom".
--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed
Evan Kirshenbaum
That being said, the only one that's hit cliche status in the US (in
my experience) is "living/sleeping under my roof". (There's also
"...in my house", but that's pretty much literal.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |He seems to be perceptive and
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |effective because he states the
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |obvious to people that don't seem
|to see the obvious.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |
(650)857-7572 | Tony Cooper
Chuck Riggs
If you're not sure where a person lives, you can always ask him where
he hangs his hat.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE
Steev Sauvage
> "Marius Hancu" <marius.ha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Here in the north of England the phrase had/has far more lubricious
connotations as in:
"I see George has got friendly wi that widder from number 47".
"Aye 'ee's got 'is feet under 'table there alreyt".
Pythonesque nudge-nudges and wink-winks optional.
Peter Moylan
> If you're not sure where a person lives, you can always ask him where
> he hangs his hat.
I usually keep mine in the car.
HVS
> On 16/01/10 01:19, Chuck Riggs wrote:
>
>> If you're not sure where a person lives, you can always ask him
>> where he hangs his hat.
>
> I usually keep mine in the car.
That's your home, then. Innit.
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
>On 15 Jan 2010, Peter Moylan wrote
>
>> On 16/01/10 01:19, Chuck Riggs wrote:
>>
>>> If you're not sure where a person lives, you can always ask him
>>> where he hangs his hat.
>>
>> I usually keep mine in the car.
>
>That's your home, then. Innit.
No, because he probably slings it into the back seat. It is where you
"hang your hat" that counts.
Skitt
> HVS wrote:
>> Peter Moylan wrote
>>>> If you're not sure where a person lives, you can always ask him
>>>> where he hangs his hat.
>>>
>>> I usually keep mine in the car.
>>
>> That's your home, then. Innit.
>
> No, because he probably slings it into the back seat. It is where you
> "hang your hat" that counts.
I don't have a hat! Am I homeless?
--
Skitt (AmE)
R H Draney
>
>Chuck Riggs wrote:
>>
>> No, because he probably slings it into the back seat. It is where you
>> "hang your hat" that counts.
>
>I don't have a hat! Am I homeless?
Don't think so, but you might want to learn this song just in case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGuFhmx_ecs#t=4m12s
....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
As long as you have a home, which could be a house, a flat, a tent or
a tree in the great outdoors, and an imagined hat to hang on either a
real or an imagined hook, no.
Peter Moylan
There was a kid in my grade 5 class who was twice the size of anyone
else in the class. We used to call him Atlas, because he always went
bare-headed.