shilling n.
used in phrs. listed below referring to one considered a simpleton, a fool.
In phrases
1. (Aus./N.Z.) sensible, intelligent, aware, trustworthy, ‘all there’; esp. in negative phr. not (quite) the full shilling etc, not very intelligent, slightly eccentric, odd (cf. full quid, the under full adj.).
(con. 1930s–50s) Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 35: We must been all losing our marbles. We really weren’t the full shilling looking for a duck’s arse for the back of our necks. | ||
Emerald Square 178: Even had he been the full shilling, I suspected work was a four letter word in his vocabulary. | ||
(con. 1930s) Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 55: My father shook his head and said, ‘Stay away from that woman. She’s not the full shilling’. | ||
Yes We have No 112: Not quite the full shilling. | ||
A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 71: Pete was not the full shilling. | ||
Guardian 11 Mar. 🌐 The policeman, it turns out, isn’t quite the full shilling, just a sitting stand-in in a uniform. | ||
May God Forgive 300: ‘Simple [...] She wasn’t quite right. Nice girl but not the full shilling’. |
2. (Irish) the proper, complete thing.
Goodbye to The Hill (1966) 99: Now that we’d started on the full shilling I agreed with her that we might as well go to bed and do it in comfort. |
unintelligent, eccentric; shilling is implied in cit. 1996.
Register (Adelaide) 3 May 5/9: The defendant’s father said, ‘My son is three pence short of a shilling in his faculties’. | ||
N. Territory Times 10 June 4/2: He trades on the prevalent belief that he is, as the saying goes, ‘a few pence short in the shilling’. | ||
Only Fools and Horses [TV script] I know a lot of people are born an ’apenny short of a shilling. | ‘Ashes to Ashes’||
Train to Hell 11: ‘Three kopecks short of a rouble,’ I thought. | ||
(con. 1920s) Emerald Square 177: Where I came from it would have been said that he was ‘a ha’penny short of a shilling’. | ||
It Was An Accident 47: You got to be a penny short. | ||
http://dennisbenson.net 14 Nov. 🌐 Thankfully the British conspiracy brigade is [...] inhabited mainly by people who are clearly three pence short of the proverbial shilling. | ||
May God Forgive 124: ‘Sometimes you amaze me, Wattie. And sometimes I think you’re just two pennies short of a shilling’. |
stupid, foolish.
Viz Oct./Nov. 13: Sid man, yorraboot ninepence short of a shillin’! | ||
Twitter 10 Feb. 🌐 Johnson has this thing about wasting money on Bridges [...] the man has to be sixpence short. |
foolish, stupid, lacking intelligence.
Lonely Plough (1931) 229: Brack and his housekeeper seemed much of a piece, and neither of them more than eleven pence in the shilling. | ||
South Riding (1988) 8: ‘Mental?’ ‘Tenpence halfpenny in the shilling.’. |
stupid, foolish.
Pagan Game (1969) 153: Every small town has its characters: Stainless Steel who had seen the light [...] Joey who was only eighteen shillings. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
a short sensational novel, published at a shilling (5p).
Bristol Mercury 16 Nov. 6/3: Mr R.L. Stevenson is writing another ‘shilling dreadful’ in which supernatural machinery will be employed. | ||
Pall Mall Gaz. 9 Aug. 4/2: Even in the realm of the shilling shocker these manners and morals are passing away. | ||
Pall Mall Gaz. 25 Sept. 4/1: ‘A Phantom Lover’ and ‘Whose Hands’ are both shilling dreadfuls. | ||
Three Men in a Boat 43: But, as the shilling shockers say, we anticipate. | ||
Portsmouth Eve. News (Devon) 23 Jan. 3/4: Lord Wolseley counselled his hearers to shun the ‘shilling dreadful’. | ||
Pink ’Un and Pelican 240: A meddling member of the bar, who should have been writing shilling shockers. | ||
Bath Chron. (Somerset) 11 Apr. 7/3: He covertly lit his candle [...] in order to read a yellow-covered shocker. | ||
Hull Dly Mail (Yorks.) 11 July 2/7: The penny dreadful;, the shilling shocker, and the comic cuts illustrated. | ||
W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 9 Mar. 1/1: A spicy novel could be written about his recent after-church amours [and] the saintly shilling-shocker would be appositely entitled ‘Venus in the Vestry’. | ||
Bath Chron. (Somerset) 15 Sept. 4/4: The sensual ‘passion story,’ the morbidly sensational ‘shocker’ and the ridiculous romance. | ||
Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 11/1: The police-cum-reporter sensationalism [...] probably had its origin in some shilling shocker. | ||
Man Market 151: All shilling ‘shockers’ are composed of certain ingredients, and doubtless one of the most popular is the hero or heroine who [...] leaves a note saying that he or she has committed suicide – which of course, he or she hasn’t done. | ||
Mr Standfast (1930) 580: I have a grudge against you for mixing up the Coolin with a shilling shocker. You’ve spoiled their sanctity. | ||
John O’London’s Weekly 7 Jan. 463/1: Probably Edgar Wallace’s best ‘shocker’ – and I use the term in no derogatory sense – was ‘The Four Just Men’. | ||
Three Hostages in Buchan (1930) 857: These shockers are too easy, Dick. You could invent better ones for yourself. | ||
Western Dly Press 23 Feb. 8/3: ‘The Bookworm’ attempted to act the plot of a ‘shilling shocker’. | ||
Eve. Teleg. (Angus, Scot.) 18 Oct. 7/1: The sort of thing one reads about in a shilling shocker. | ||
(ref. to late 19C) | Snobbery with Violence (1979) 109: This special language of the shilling shocker [...] was doubtless evolved in the first place as a means of getting attention by frightening people.
a Baptist or Methodist tea-meeting, where refreshment was available at a shilling (5p) a head.
Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era. |
In phrases
(Aus./N.Z.) a bar-room dice gambling game in which everyone puts one shilling (5p) in a kitty and the winner pays for the round (and poss. makes a small profit).
Eve. Post (Wellington) 7 Jan. 17: A man had paid his shilling in a game of ‘shilling in and the winner shouts’ [AND]. | ||
Victorian Law Reports 749: A game called or known as ‘a shilling in and the winner shouts’. | ||
Austral Eng. 456/1: Tamabroora [...] More generally known as ‘A shilling in and the winner shouts’. | ||
Advocate (Burnie) 29 May 4/1: They were having ‘a shilling in and the winner shouts’ when he arrived . | ||
Sun. Times (Perth) 14 Apr. 1/1: His X and Co. slipped out unobserved by the thirsty smoodgers [and] these ‘influential ratepayers’ were therefore compelled to descend to a ‘shilling in’. | ||
(ref. to late 19C) Bulletin 20/2: Some Western Queensland slang of my day: … a shilling-in was ‘tambaroora’. |