lop?

[parkhead]

Since moving up further north , I have encountered many a time the saying 'as fit as a Lop' What is a lop?

[Hippy]

A lop is a flea. Being as fit as a lop means able to leap about with acrobatic agility.

[sft42]

Oooh...i t'ough t'at a lop was a bunny wabbit? There you go....learn something new everyday and all that jazz.

[Maudlettice]

A lop is a rabbit, not a flea.

[Quizmonster]

Actually, a lop may be either a flea or a rabbit. However, 'as fit as a flea' is quite a common saying throughout Britain, whereas I - personally at least - have never heard anyone say 'as fit as a rabbit'...not even a lop-eared rabbit! Hippy has certainly got the definition right in this case.

[bernardo]

If they mean "as fit as a flea" then why don't they just say so? If they mean "as fit as a rabbit" then why don't they just say so? Why do they have to confuse us normal people in the south by using made-up strange northern words?

[Quizmonster]

Dear Bernardo...'Lop', meaning 'flea', was used by Caxton - a southern English writer and the father of printing in this country - as well as many other southern writers as far back as the 15th century and for long afterwards. So, although it may be used thus only in northern areas nowadays, it is no more a "made up northern" word than 'flea' itself is! Southerners have 'lost' the word rather than northerners having 'invented' it.

[Maudlettice]

Northerners mean "as fit as a rabbit" not "as fit as a flea".You can easily judge a fit rabbit, but a flea? Quizmonster believes that North of Hyde Park Corner we still paint ourselves with woad. Thats not true either. Hurrah for ICI.

[Quizmonster]

Dear Maude, I'll bet I come from a darned sight further north of Hyde Park Corner than you do! So far north, indeed, that - by the time you get there - lop meaning flea is again unheard of. Mind you, so is lop = rabbit. You might hear people there say: "A lop-eared rabbit..." but never just "A lop..."

The plain fact is that lop = flea is now just used in the dialects of Northern England. I could be wrong, but I still very much doubt that such self-proclaimed 'Northerners' really mean 'rabbit' in the 'fit as a...' phrase.

[Maudlettice]

Dear Old Quizzer. Come off it, you do not know where North is, let alone been there. We all know that you live in Frinton-on Sea, smoke a hooked pipe, never get out of your dressing gown all day, start on the brandy at 4pm, and think that the North Circular Road is Hadrian's Wall. It is coming to something, though, when the best brain in Frinton cannot tell his siphonaptera from his oryctolagus cuniculus. Personally, I am going to vote "Yes" in the forthcoming referendum "Should Frinton-on-Sea be given to France?".

[FredPuli]

Maude; Frinton-on-sea should go to the Netherlands; it's full of Dutch nowadays because the local ports are convenient for 'em. But is QM really here? I thought he was a Scot. So HE'S the one sighted in Connaught Avenue by the undertaker's. Odd -looking, doctorly cove, seems pleasant enough.

[Quizmonster]

Oddly enough, Maude, I was actually in France all day yesterday and hence the gap in responding. However, I was not part of the Frinton Secessionist Party In Europe Group ('Fizzypig' as they call themselves) there, most of whom were even more legless than I was, judging by the trip back.

Fred's right. I referred earlier to 'where I came from', which is somewhere to the north of Aberdeen. Go on...admit it...you didn't know there was such a place as 'north of Aberdeen'! That would be 'little yellow idol' territory. However, I now live further south than Frinton and have no objection whatever to its removal into the control of mainland Europe.

'Odd-looking'? In the eyes of some, I daresay; 'doctorly', in the sense of learn�d, to be sure, and 'pleasant', certainly.

I'm still waiting to discover how the plump floppiness of the lop-eared rabbit came to symbolise fitness. Have I been missing the point here? Is it one of these reverse, joke definitions, whereby one might describe Bernard Manning, say, as being "as fit as a lop"?

[Maudlettice]

Very glad to hear from you, dear old Quizzer. From the sighting Fred had of you I thought you might have popped your lops. I did in fact have a vision of you in Scotland, at Kinllochnanuagh, with Bonnie Prince Charlie leaning down from his statue and saying to you "Och aye, I had to lop to Skye ye naw". "Big lops have smaller lops upon their backs to bite'em/And smaller lops have lesser lops, and so on infinitum" as they say in the north of England.

[FredPuli]

QM 'odd-looking' should be read in the context of what passes for normal in that cemetery with lights, Frinton ! Perhaps 'out- of -place- looking' would have been better but it's clumsy. Isn't it surprising what you can see from that tower block ? Best view in Frinton, so it is ( because it's the only place you can't see the tower block itself).

[Quizmonster]

I've never actually been to Frinton, Fred. Isn't that the place where one can - quite literally - be from 'the wrong side of the tracks'? On one side of the level-crossing you find the local peasantry in their huddled masses, whilst the gentry occupy the other. Wasn't there a major hoo-haa a year or two back because someone had the effrontery to apply for planning permission to open a chip-shop? Or was it a pub? If the latter, I can assure you...Frinton is certainly not "my kinda town".

[FredPuli]

Indeed QM the town has a level crossing, which is still, of course, manned by a real crossing keeper to open the gates ( Frintonians expect to have staff, not machines!). This separates the original Frinton from much later housing that has a pub and a chip shop and its own shopping centre; however a house 'within the gates' fetches substantially more than any near identical one outside. The chippy 'within' seems to have closed but a shop converted to a pub exists there, with as many house rules, dress code and restrictions as you would expect from the bourgeoisie trying to be genteel ( I keep a flat very well 'within' just to annoy them!)

[Quizmonster]

I do hope you haven't exposed too much of yourself - if you see what I mean - Fred, above and elsewhere on this website over the months. Sufficient, perhaps, for other Frintonians who might happen by here - or is this all too plebeian for them? - to identify you, I mean. You could easily finish up 'outwith the gate' before you knew what had hit you! Thanks, though, for the confirmation that it was Frinton I had in mind.