Apologies for the resurrection... The term 'guv' or 'governor' is most commonly used for a reason by manual tradespeople, to denote the person paying their bill, or the person who orders and accepts their work, to distinguish from the tenant, the property's legal owner, and so on.

2015年2月12日 · @Ben Strange, OED online's first guvnor is from an 1852 Punch ("I say, Guvner...") and there's no "'ello guv-nah" mentioned. But "'ello guv-nah" isn't really a set phrase, just 'ello+guvnor. Oliver Twist was published in 1838 but I don't find any guvner or variants in the book and no "ello gunah" or variants at all in Google Books in the 19th ...

2018年9月26日 · a justifiable arrest; usu. in the tongue-in-cheek phr. it’s a fair cop guvnor, put the bracelets on... any situation seen as fair and about which there is no complaint. Wiktionary cites an early usage: 1891, Montagu Stephen Williams, Later Leaves: Being the Further Reminiscences of Montagu Williams, Q. C., Macmillan and Co.:

2021年1月25日 · Wiktionary Talk has (at the moment, at least):. The bee's knees is an English slang phrase.. The Oxford English Dictionary records the expression "bee's knee" as meaning something small or insignificant from 1797.

2011年10月3日 · As all good sayings do, it comes from a sailor. The following is an excerpt from Memoirs of Serjeant Paul Swanston: being a narrative of a soldier's life, in barracks, ships, camps, battles, and captivity on sea and land; with notices of …

The phrase emerges from two related meanings of "top," was a common greeting throughout the United Kingdom in the 19th century, and fell out of use only to be revived as a so-called Irish expression by American filmmakers looking for ways to distinguish Irish characters.