Crocs of the day…

When I planned my blip yesterday I decided that I would wear my green crocs. But early this morning the rain was really heavy and accompanied by thunder and lightening so I thought I’d have to wear a mac, which would mean pink crocs to match. The weather’s still a bit dodgy so I haven’t decided what clothes to wear so you have one green, one pink. A good start for a Silly Saturday.

Which brings me to the sayings of the day. Because my pic is crocs, which are plastic clogs. Well not actually plastic if we’re being persnickety (another word I got wrong; I thought it was pernickety). so what are Crocs made of? Crocs are made of a patented foam called Croslite, which means they can be worn on land and in water. The foam material is actually exclusive to Crocs and is a closed-cell resin, not plastic or rubber. I’m none the wiser but I love them!
So back to sayings of the day. The first is pop your clogs.
Popping something is an old fashioned slang term for pawning something. A working man or woman in the north of England would need their clogs until they died, unlike their overcoat or Sunday clothes that could be pawned on a Monday and redeemed on a Friday.
And the second is clever clogs.
Clever clogs” means ‘ a clever or smart person, a wiseacre. The OED describes it as colloquial and dialect, and gives a ‘first used’ date of 1866, when it was found in a novel by Elizabeth Lynn Linton. At that time, ‘boots’ was just a term, meaning fellow. Since clogs were used in North of England many years ago, instead of saying, what a clever fellow, the expression had become what a “clever clogs”. This explanation fits with what Linton actually wrote “She left the explanation to those ‘clever clogs’ who pretended to understand the ins and outs of the gravest mysteries of life”.

I think all that is definitely silly enough for this Silly Saturday;-)
And is this more or less silly…
I have now checked the origin of pernickety/persnickery and find that pernickety was a Scottish version while persnickety an English. My mum was Scottish so that must be why I learned pernickety!! Phew it’s good to be right sometimes…