Could do with a lick of paint…
And today’s saying is ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it’.
What is the origin of the phrase, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it"?
Examples of this expression crop up from the early 19th century and are presumed to derive from the belief that pipe-smoking is a good aid to thought.
In The Pickwick Papers (1836), Dickens uses the expression in an incomplete form, indicating that it's likely the phrase was sufficiently well known not to have to be spelled out in full.
Come, make yourselves scarce! – it is useless to stay,
You will gain nothing here by a longer delay;
‘Quick! Presto! Begone!’ as the conjurors say,
For, as to the Lady, I’ve stowed her away
In this hill, in a stratum of London blue clay;
And I shan’t, I assure you, restore her to-day
Till you faithfully promise no more to say
‘Nay,’
But declare, ‘If she will be a nun, why she may.
‘For this you’ve my work, and I never yet broke it,
So put that in your pipe, my Lord Otto, and smoke it! -
One hint to your vassals; - a month at the ‘Mill’
Shall be nuts to what they’ll get who worry Odille!”
The Lay of St Odille, The Ingoldsby Legends (~1837)
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