Steve Crook

No, it's much older than lorries.

================================================== ===============
From Questions and Answers:
It means that the person addressed is contemptible or worthless, a scrounger. Though it can be a relatively mild insult among friends, you should avoid saying it to strangers unless you want a smack in the mush or a punch up the bracket.

The original form—in the nineteenth century—was toe rag. It referred to the strips of cloth that convicts or tramps wrapped around their feet as an inadequate substitute for socks. The first recorded use is by J F Mortlock in his Experiences of a Convict of 1864: “Stockings being unknown, some luxurious men wrapped round their feet a piece of old shirting, called, in language more expressive than elegant, a ‘toe-rag’ ”. It didn’t take long to become a term of abuse—in 1875 a book on British circus life said that “Toe rags is another expression of contempt ... used ... chiefly by the lower grades of circus men, and the acrobats who stroll about the country, performing at fairs”.

It seems to have come to wider British knowledge and use from the 1970s on, largely because it was aired in the ITV police series The Sweeney about the London mobile detective force called the flying squad (rhyming slang: flying squad = Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street), a programme that delighted in using London slang.

The tow-rag spelling is sometimes seen because people have lost the link to the original sense, long since obsolete.
================================================== ===============

So it's because someone is low down & smelly :)

Steve

Fellwanderer

Toe rag must have dug into the subconsciousness pretty quickly as I would never have thought it was as late as the 1970s before it became common parlance - and I don't think I ever saw an epsiode of The Sweeney when it was originally aired. As for its spelling - I've always assumed it was toe rag.

FELL
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/innocent.gif[/img]

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

samkydd

"Toe Rag" makes more sense than "Tow Rag" but I've heard that it was also used by the British Army many moons ago when we were still adding new pink bits of The British Empire to the maps. It was a detrimental name for someone who was considered to be a bit of a low life scoundrel, and was an English mispronunciation of the word "Touareg", the name of a tribe of nomadic arabs in the Sahara who were treated with the same contempt as gypsies or "pykies".

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Fran

What is this Call My Bluff now? [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif[/img]
Ray Winstone's new series called Vincent starts next Monday on ITV1 at 9pm. Having seen a trailer I was disappointed to discover that it's not a mini-series about Van Gogh!

samkydd

See new topic Vincent.

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Aenima

I just loved the way Winstone and that guy from East Enders were trying to out-Cockney each other.

I'll 'av 'arf

DeeDee

I'd never heard of Ray Winston until I saw him in Ripley's Game -very good! So I immediately went out an rented Sexy Beast and I'm afraid I'm now a devoted fan! I heard he was cast in Beowulf, but cast in the animated version as the voice of Beowulf. Now, Gerald Butler is cast as Beowulf in the live action Beowulf and Grendel with a release date unknown!