What else would we expect from you Valley??? Thats why your husband 'pushes you too the curb' when you walk past a Wine Store........................

Let them think what they want. I KNOW you better than that. Your just a little cream puff..........................

In fact we're both right about this JJ it's just that your explanation is a fuller and more accurate one... I forgot some of the detail about the French used and you corrected it - spot-on. It was indeed "gardez l'eau" that people shouted as they emptied their chamber pots into the street below... "l'eau" pronounced with the "eau" sounding like the end of the word "gateau" became corrupted by the non-French-speaking English users to sound like "ooo" instead of "eau"... The gardez bit eventually got lost in the nicities, just as it would if it was said in English... If you're going to shout "Watch out for the water" close to a thousand times a year you will eventually abbreviate it to "Water!!" Plus, if you were an uneducated chamber-maid emptying out the contents of your master's chamber-pot you would shout out your own approximation of "l'eau" which would sound like "loooo!!"

But why would they shout the warning out in French in the first place? Good question and it hinges firmly around the neck of William the Conqueror, The Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the subsequent Norman invasion of Britain... Before Will hopped over the channel and put the "Under New Management" sign up on the English kingdom - the language of the common people of Britain had been firmly Anglo-Saxon in Angle-land or Engle-land or England

When the French took over the English throne in 1066 William confiscated the lands of the Barons and wealthy land owners and replaced them with his own entourage (see another French word in English...) Overnight, the real movers and shakers of English high society were all speaking French... If you wanted to climb the social ladder of power it became "de rigeur" to speak a at least a modicum of French and a sign that you were at least a "player" in the game...

This fashionable use of French words had a trickle-down effect to the lower echelons of the population - the peasants... Sheep were a staple part (if occasional) part of the British diet and "Lamb" (young sheep) was a delicacy. But the French called Lamb by its French name "Mouton" which the peasants (who already knew full well what lamb was) mis-pronounced as "Mutton." The peasants knew that Mutton was just a fancy name for the same old dish they'd enjoyed for years and that just by giving it a new and currently fashionable name didn't actually make it taste any better... and from this situation we get the wry expression "Like lamb dressed up as mutton" when referring to someone who dresses (or acts) above their true station in life...

Incidentally, according to some scholars, this era of "privilege through pretension" marks the birth of that unique phenomena of British life the "Class system" something which is a perpetual enigma to people born outside the British Isles and unique in the world... It flourished and peaked in the 19th Century during Queen Victoria's reign when dropping a sprinkling of appropriate French into a conversation was seen as a sign of "good breeding"... and (if you've ever seen the long-running BBC comedy series 'Only Fools And Horses') also is the reason why British people find it sooo funny when "Delboy" (the main character) drops inappropriate French quotations into his conversation when he tries to impress people with his "breeding and education."

Anglo-Saxon (which was strongly Germanic) incorporated the French words (which themselves were, in the large part, derivations from Latin) into common usage and thus ensured the long-standing "love-hate" (mostly hate) relationship between the French and the English which continues to this day - and indeed has spilled over into other countries, the best example of which is present day Canada where the provinces of Ontario and Quebec (the two provinces that made up the original country of Canada up until 1866 when the building of trans-Canada railway united most of the current provinces of modern-day Canada) still regard each other with thinly-veiled distrust and contempt.

The English eventually got their revenge for the French invasion when Henry the Fifth returned the favour by invading and occupying most of Northern France. The tipping point in this tit-for-tat invasion was the strategically brilliant "Battle of Agincourt" where the outnumbered English army strategically slaughtered (no exaggeration) the French army and allowed Henry to progress unopposed and eventually demand the surrender of the French King - whose daughter he married to seal the deal. This gave rise to the ironic phrase that English people use to retaliate when faced with unexplained abuse from the French... "They've never forgiven us for Agincourt. 

A very long explanation for a very short word... loo... which is where I've gotta go now...

SevenT

I just can't help reading your posts and then your sign off and laughing....you'd have been as well singing up as blowme or biteme.