Scrounge and scrounger.
What's your definition?
I think it denotes asking for something, usually an object, as gift. That is not expecting to pay for it.
So -
Scrounge a sandwich from the kitchen
Scrounge the usable wood going into a skip
A scounger is someone, usually a bit unwelcome, who is always scrounging something from me.
'He's a right scrounger'
Thinking Box:
Skip - how did an action become the word for a waste container?
Clodhoppers.
Don't we have some great sounding words in English.
Imagine the perplexity of a ELL coming across this word.
While they might sort out the hop how would they know what a clod might be.
Clod. As in a clod of earth. A great wet cohesive lump of mud.
Clodhoppers. Heavy pair of boots. We wore ammunition boots. they were large, very heavy, steel capped and reinforced. Just in case we dropped a full shell casing on our foot. We called them clodhoppers. How on earth did we get this bit of imagery, jumping over the furroughs in a ploughed field, into our military slang.
Did clodhoppers in fact come from clog. The wooden shoe.
Thinking Box.
Hopper. How did an action, hop, also a plant used in making beer, hops, evolve into a word for a large container for flour, grain and also hops? Is there a clue there?
I grew up in an area influenced very heavily by military, in particular navy slang.
One word, still in use, is 'mush', pronounced 'moosh'. {Short sound however not oo as in moo.
Right mush, lets get this finished.
Ok mush?
Where on earth does this single word have it's origins?
It's not mush, or mash.
Is the origin arabic.
Why do we say shoplifter?
The meaning is nothing to do with lifting up a shop but 'lifting' goods from a shop. Stealing.
Thinking Box:
Careful of the phrase shirtlifer which means something else entirely.
Lots of different varieties of sausages, and quite a few names.
Bangers
Snorters
What else can you suggest?
And don't forget bangers and mash with onion gravy. Staple diet.
Apparently in Australia a snag is a sausage.
With thanks to Ed Dale for that gem.
Follow him on Twitter here http://twitter.com/Ed_Dale
Thinking Box
A bunch of fives
Gen. Genuine information. 'Give us the gen'
How many fingers on your hand. Five.
Well okay it's four fingers and a thumb but the phrase a bunch of fives does not refer to a bunch of bananas. It's used as a threatening expression.
Do you want a buuch of fives?
So a bunch of fives is a fist formed from the hand.
Also:
A punch up the 'snouter'. To threaten to hit someone on the nose.
Thinking Box.
Snouter. From snout, being a pig's nose. What other words for the nose?
Yet another example of confusing abbreviation in speech.
Give me the gen.
What's the gen?
As in give me the genuine information.
So why not 'please tell me'?
Also we abbreviated information to info