What does calling someone a grass mean?
What does calling someone a grass mean?
informer
To grass in British slang is indeed to inform on a person to the authorities; a grass is an informer. The noun starts to appear in print in the 1920s and the verb a few years later.
What does your wife is a grass mean?
Nowadays a woman is called a grass widow whose husband had to leave home (for example, obliged to work far away from his family). Alternatively, she may be a divorced woman or a woman living apart from her husband (so in American English).
What is a grass widow person?
Definition of grass widow 1 chiefly dialectal. a : a discarded mistress. b : a woman who has had an illegitimate child. 2a : a woman whose husband is temporarily away from her. b : a woman divorced or separated from her husband.
What is a grass widower?
Definition of grass widower 1 : a man divorced or separated from his wife. 2 : a man whose wife is temporarily away from him.
Where does grass you up come from?
‘Grassing up’ has been a commonly used expression in the UK since the mid 20th century, but is less common elsewhere. The first known use of ‘grass’ in that context is Arthur Gardner’s Tinker’s Kitchen, 1932, which defined a grass as “an informer”.
Why is it called a grass widow?
In a usage note, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) has this explanation: “The grass in grass widow seems to have originally made reference to the makeshift bed of grass or hay (as opposed to a real bed with a mattress and sheets) on which a woman might lie with her lover before he rises …
What is the origin of the term Grass widow?
It’s first used by Sir Thomas More in his Dialogue of 1528. But then it meant something rather different: either an abandoned mistress or an unmarried woman who had cohabited with several men. It might have expressed the idea that the abandoned lover had been “put out to grass”.
What is the origin of the term Grass Widow?
