Forum: Author Hangout

Got/Put/Have My Feet On

awnlee jawking 🚫

I offered to run a trivial errand for a neighbour today because I 'already had my feet on'. Cue bafflement.

It's an expression from my childhood meaning that I was wearing outdoor footwear: Wellingtons (my neighbour was wearing slippers and it was raining).

I suspect the expression originated from a Yorkshire parent, but Google steadfastly refuses to provide any help based on its AI's certainty that I didn't mean exactly what I typed.

Is anyone here familiar with the expression and do you know of its origin?

AJ

Replies: Switch Blayde Diamond Porter jimq2 JoeBobMack LupusDei

Switch Blayde 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I 'already had my feet on'

I never heard it. And Google (that knows I'm American) didn't have a clue either. When I asked Google if it was a British expression it said no.

Diamond Porter 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I think I have heard the expression before, though certainly not in Yorkshire. Even if I hadn't, the metonymy would have been obvious to me in context.

jimq2 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I've heard in the southeastern part of the USA back in the early 50's. My Grandmother would tell me to "Go get your feet on" when I was running around barefoot. I think it was an old colloquialism for "Go get something on your feet." She was born in the 1870's.

JoeBobMack 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Super Grok and ChatGPT on extended thinking and deep research both searches linguistic sources and other sources and drew complete blanks. Both concluded this was a form of speech limited to a very small population, maybe even one family, and likely for a limited time. I gave them your post, so they focused on Yorkshire.

LupusDei 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Being non-English at all I still instinctively know what you likely meant. I would reserve doubt would it mean "having shoes on" or "being on the move already" to be or not resolved by further context, but it wouldn't have stumbled me in reading.

Reply to topic

Forum: Author Hangout

Got/Put/Have My Feet On

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT...