Something something something leather…

It’s the most annoying thing when you hear something when you haven’t got a way of jotting it down or noting it somewhere, something you want to write about maybe, or look up to find out more or to just find out what it means- and then you only half-remember it, or forget it altogether, except as something you wanted to remember!

A few days ago I wrote about the expression ‘hell for leather‘ or ‘hell-bent for leather‘; yesterday morning, first thing, the radio alarm came on and I had not properly woken up when I caught someone use an expression I’d not heard of before but understood… something about ‘leather’ – ‘lay on the leather?’ ‘leave the leather’, ‘something something leather’ or ‘leather something something‘… I tried to really impress it into my mind, but somehow it slipped away. I understood it to mean to do it in a hurry or at top speed or without delay – not exactly the same as ‘hell for leather’, subtly different.

Well, I have been scouring, all my books, and the internet but cannot come up with the phrase I think I heard… maybe I misheard it? Maybe I was asleep and dreamed it?

All I could find was:

having leather lungs, leather-lunged – having a really strong or very loud voice
as ever trod leather/shoe-leather
as tough as old leather (also tough as an old boot – ie. an old leather boot)
leather or feather – chicken or beef

When I saw ‘leather-lunged’ it was at the end of a list arranged in alphabetical order and I read lunged as the past tense of lunge, not in possession of lungs… it puzzled me for the moment!

2 Comments

simonjkyte on March 16, 2017 at 4:53 pm

I should be a bit careful but there was a time when I had a boss who used to mess up all these colloquialisms – you can lead a horse to the water but you can’t make a dog’s ear out if it etc

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