Noisy Arabs

Posted by Gary Martin on July 11, 2009 at 07:51

In Reply to: Noisy Arabs posted by Smokey Stover on July 06, 2009 at 00:19:

: : : Something from the depths of memory - "Noisy Arabs" or "Shut-up you noisy Arabs". Phrases that I know and use but don't know from where they come.

: : I've never heard that one. But in the second half of the 19th century "city Arab" or "street Arab" was British slang for a homeless guttersnipe child, presumably because they were "nomads" of no fixed abode, like Bedouin. Perhaps your phrase derives from this? "Shut up you noisy guttersnipes" sounds pretty plausible to me.(VSD)

: I think it would also sound plausible to the editors of the OED. Under guttershipe, after explaining that a snipe is a bird, they give, as one meaning:

: "b. A child brought up 'in the gutter'; one of the lowest class; an urchin. Also attrib. and as adj.

: [One example of many:] 1884 Century Mag. XXVIII. 557 The gutter-snipes and Arabs of the streets of Gravesend."

I don't know the origin but can recall my mother using it often to describe us unruly children. It was a commonplace expression there and then - the English West Midlands in the 1950s.