Читать книгу Morrissey’s Perfect Pint - Richard Fox - Страница 15
ОглавлениеBeer words and phrases
Did you know that when you describe something as ‘ropey’ or use a ‘rule of thumb’ you are using brewing words?
Ropey – if you think something is not up to scratch then you may call it ‘a bit shit’ or ‘ropey’. That comes from strands of bacteria floating in infected beer – fit only for the drain or the Stella pump.
Rule of Thumb – before brewers had a thermometer to check the temperature at different stages of the brewing process, they used to stick their thumb in to see whether the brew was at the right level. This was called the ‘rule of thumb’.
Mind Your Ps and Qs – We have it on good authority (see Talking Shit, page 107) that the ‘Ps and Qs’ in question are pints and quarts. When things got a bit messy after three solid days drinking at your 18th-century hostelry, the landlord would shout ‘Mind your pints and quarts’ as a way of reminding his faithful (if completely oblivious) customers that, if they were too rowdy, they might spill their drink.
Three Sheets to the Wind – is a sailor’s expression, from the days of sailing ships. The terminology of sailing ships is excessively complicated and, every time I refer to it, people say I’ve got it wrong, usually contradicting each other. So treat what follows as a broad-brush treatment, open to dispute on the fine points. We ignorant landlubbers might think that a sheet is a sail, but, in traditional sailing-ship days, a sheet was a rope, particularly one attached to the bottom corner of a sail (it actually comes from an Old English term for the corner of a sail). The sheets were vital, since they trimmed the sail to the wind. If they ran loose, the sail would flutter about in the wind and the ship would wallow off its course out of control.
