"How's your granny for slack?"

Exit

A mate of mine told me last night that he read this phrase in a useless trivia book and he wondered if I knew what it meant. Apparently it was an Irish pick-up line. There was no time line so it could've been in the 1970's or the 1880's. I've never heard it before in my life, so I come here for some ideas.

I can only think of two possible meanings...

1. Granny being rhyming slang for fanny, but that seems very crude and i can't imagine anybody using that line having any luck.

2. Granny meaning knickers as in "Granny knickers". Basically another way of saying "Let me into your knickers" or "Drop your drawers" or something like that. Highly unlikely, but I can't think of anything else.

l3LoWnA

I think that one day there was a coal man who wanted to make a sale and he asked a cute girl outside her grandmothers house "how's your granny for slack" and they fell in love and lived a long and happy life together.

ChippingSodbury

Gotta agree with l3LoWnA as another Limerick favourite was "How's your mother for blocks?" As in blocks of timber. So this time, the block man ran away with the cute daughter...

Okie

Not only can I not cast any light on the opening statement, but here's a selection of sayings that I've heard and don't understand either!

1- How's yer belly for spots?
2- How's yer arse for love-bites?
3- How's yer fanny for lodgers?
4- How's your mother for sugar?

and finally, my personal favourite......

How's your uterus for turf? :eek:

Sinfonia

I think we should just make some up (as nonsensical as possible of course):

How's yer handbag for a slap?
How's yer lampshade for a shovel?
How's yer monkey for some fudge?
How's yer BossArky for some loggin'?

Volvoboy

SumGuy wrote: »

How's yer lampshade for a shovel?

LOL!:D, so many uses!

Terry

I'd imagine it has something to do with coal men and twisting a phrase to make it have a sexual connotation.

Slack referring initially to those small lumps of coal.

randylonghorn

Okie wrote: »

2- How's yer arse for love-bites?
3- How's yer fanny for lodgers?

Those two are hardly difficult to understand ... doubt if they ever functioned especially well as chat-up lines though!

Sound more like something a guy might say to a girl who was a bit full of herself, or who had already given him the brush-off ...

SumGuy wrote: »

How's yer monkey for some fudge?
How's yer BossArky for some loggin'?

And I reckon Terry is right re: the original question ...

juuge

Exit wrote: »

A mate of mine told me last night that he read this phrase in a useless trivia book and he wondered if I knew what it meant. Apparently it was an Irish pick-up line. There was no time line so it could've been in the 1970's or the 1880's. I've never heard it before in my life, so I come here for some ideas.

I can only think of two possible meanings...

1. Granny being rhyming slang for fanny, but that seems very crude and i can't imagine anybody using that line having any luck.

2. Granny meaning knickers as in "Granny knickers". Basically another way of saying "Let me into your knickers" or "Drop your drawers" or something like that. Highly unlikely, but I can't think of anything else.

There was a song called...
'she's only a coalman's daughter but there's a bit of slack in her knickers'

The Hill Billy

Okie wrote: »

1- How's yer belly for spots?
2- How's yer arse for love-bites?
3- How's yer fanny for lodgers?
4- How's your mother for sugar?

IIRC - The full phrase was "How's your belly for spots & your ärse for pimples?"

Oman

Hows yer Ohh for some man

Sinfonia

Oman wrote: »

Hows yer Ohh for some man

Ha! Works brilliantly!:D

tampopo

juuge wrote: »

There was a song called...
'she's only a coalman's daughter but there's a bit of slack in her knickers'

the version I heard was, "there's no more coal in the coalshed, but there's plenty of slack in your granny's knickers"

SUNGOD

its actually an early english 20th century expression which was originally " i will house your granny for slack " in time it became " house your granny for slack " and then "hows your granny for slack" .at the turn of the century there was a epidemic of long life among the elderly which resulted in an abundance of elderly grannies and grandads and most familys had trouble feeding the larger the usual household, fortunatly world war one came along and that took care of all of the grandads thus leaving approximately 1.5 million grannies across the land, at the same time the war caused all industry too flourish which in turn increased the value and demand for coal .the common people had little if any money and through the long and cold winters of war time would do almost anything to get their hands on a highly sought after bag of coal. some would even offer to take in other peoples relatives in to their own homes for the duration of the war in return for a weekly supply of coal or slack as it was known .as the most abundant and least productive member of the household was the granny a common phrase said to most coal merchants was " house your granny for slack"

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

that's too sensible to be true...

davejones

SUNGOD wrote: »

its actually an early english 20th century expression which was originally " i will house your granny for slack " in time it became " house your granny for slack " and then "hows your granny for slack" .at the turn of the century there was a epidemic of long life among the elderly which resulted in an abundance of elderly grannies and grandads and most familys had trouble feeding the larger the usual household, fortunatly world war one came along and that took care of all of the grandads thus leaving approximately 1.5 million grannies across the land, at the same time the war caused all industry too flourish which in turn increased the value and demand for coal .the common people had little if any money and through the long and cold winters of war time would do almost anything to get their hands on a highly sought after bag of coal. some would even offer to take in other peoples relatives in to their own homes for the duration of the war in return for a weekly supply of coal or slack as it was known .as the most abundant and least productive member of the household was the granny a common phrase said to most coal merchants was " house your granny for slack"

That's a really good answer
i was thinking along thoses same lines, but you could have made it a little bit funnier!

SUNGOD

davejones wrote: »

That's a really good answer
i was thinking along thoses same lines, but you could have made it a little bit funnier!

i just sent 1.5 million grandads to their death and made their wives homeless for a bag of coal, i was barely able to type through the tears and you want comedy !!!!