Food & eating · Ăn uống 494

From street food to feasts — how Vietnamese and English talk about eating.

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spitalfields’ breakfast

At the East-end of London this is understood as consisting of a tight necktie and a short pipe. Amongst workmen it is usual to tighten the apron string when no dinner is at hand. Hunters and trappers always take in their belts when supplies are short. "An Irishman’s dinner" is a low East-end term, and means a smoke and a visit to the urinal. Sometimes the phrase is, "I’ll go out and count the railings," i.e., the park or area railings, mental instead of maxillary exercise.

English Idiom Historical

to bite

To over-reach, or impose; also to steal.--Cant.--Biting was once esteemed a kind of wit, similar to the humbug. An instance of it is given in the Spectator: A man under sentence of death having sold his body to a surgeon rather below the market price, on receiving the money, cried, A bite! I am to be hanged in chains.--To bite the roger; to steal a portmanteau. To bite the wiper, to steal a handkerchief. To bite on the bridle; to be pinched or reduced to difficulties.

English Idiom Historical