(no subject)

[prairiedaun]

The girl's name, 'Fanny', does of course result in chuckles on either side of the Atlantic. Anthony Trollope's mother, Frances, wrote a highly critical book called The Domestic Manners of the Americans. The Americans were rather non-plussed since they simply could not believe that the 'Fanny Trollope' was not a pseudonym. There is also the phrase 'sweet Fanny Adams' which is sometimes abbreviated to 'sweet FA'. Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old child who was murdered and dismembered in Alton, Hampshire, in 1867. Her grave is still there. At around the same time, the British Navy started preserving chopped mutton in tins, and the sailors - always an uncouth lot - described this as 'sweet Fanny Adams' which eventually came to mean 'nothing of any good at all'. An unhappy epitaph to a nasty story.

Am I the only one that thought it meant "sweet fuck-all"?

And yes, this is research. :)