Regarding toodle-pip:

Quote:
I only really brought it up because I heard it while watching BBC America last night. On "As Time Goes By", which seems less than farcical about that sort of thing.


I believe that toodle-pip is related to toodle-oo which I was once told resulted from British Soldiers in the First World War being unable to say "Tout a l'heure, alors". Oh, that's another one, it's "First World War" not "World War 1".

I've been caught out by the Day of the Tentacle barf and failing to successfully order water in California too. I caused a great deal of confusion at Comdex one year asking for the number of a stand before some helpful guy shouted from the back of the queue that "stand is British for booth".

The English "fillet" is such an old word (although originally from Latin via Old French according to wikipaedia) that I suspect that the French pronunciation in American restaurants was for effect and it stuck.

Mike