bog roll and other great englishisms...

Having been here for more than 5 years now, I thought I had heard most all of the slang terms for household things.... well I was wrong!

The other day Andy used the phrase "bog roll" in a sentence to me and I was in fits of giggles... he was talking about toilet paper, toilet roll, loo roll. I just had images of bogs in my head and laughed and laughed. He couldn't explain to me why it was called bog roll though.

(((I've since looked it up and apparently "bog" is one of the words for the toilet from the 1800s...)))

Another funny englishism that came out yesterday in our staff meeting at work-- several of my colleagues had been to a couple of seminars on how to get more people in the doors of libraries and how to make libraries more effective etc. and one of the main topics was the whole marketing issue-- especially with book displays. They were talking about selling an image... because it's all about making a library's displays like a bookshop's displays-- to sell the books to the borrower to take them out and up our issues statistics.

So they were talking about how one of the seminar speakers had used the phrase "Sell the Sizzle" (not the sausage)... to mean selling the whole image of a lifestyle that you're meant to have if you read this book etc.

load of rubbish really, but hilarious imagery... and great phrase.

Posted by kristen at October 13, 2004 6:42 AM