Discussion Groups / British English / August 2005

oo-er missus... pushing up daisies perhaps.

Go west (First World war)
Go for a Burton (WW2)
Meet one's maker.
Give up the ghost.
Shuffle off this mortal coil.
Pass on.
Join the majority.

Paul Burke (that's not a phrase for 'to die' by the way).

"Six feet under" (dead and buried)
"In the sweet by-and-by" (heaven, American hymns)
"Beulah land" (heaven, American hymns)
"Fiddlers' Green" (heaven, place of ease and comfort for sailors in folk
songs)
"Davy Jones' locker" (bottom of the sea, where pirates sent their victims)
"Gone/passed over" (term used by Spiritualist churches)
"Pass on/away" (die)
"Gone to Hilo" (old sailors' term)
"Breathe one's last"
"Pennies on one's eyes" (coins were used to cover the eyes of the dead)
"Coin in the mouth" (to pay Charon to ferry the body across the River Styx
into the Underworld)
"Stiff as a board" (rigor mortis)

The "high drop" referred to death by hanging (by the neck),
           also referred to as "having one's neck stretched".
"Parson's Green" was a large cemetery in London which was
           sometimes used as a metaphor for death.
"God's acre" refers to a graveyard.
"Amen Corner" usually refers to a place on the route (on foot)
           of a coffin to the cemetery (usually of a non-Conformist
           congregation) where prayers came to an end and everyone
           in the funeral party would say "Amen".  We have such a
           place in the village where I live.

apprentice wrote...

(become) food for worms / wormfood

Hello, apprentice, says, in message
<5732a$42f722de$540aa681$13967@news.chello.pl> :

 In French, there is "to eat the dandelions by the roots".