Phrase Finder

We're in, Meredith

Posted by ESC on May 05, 2004

In Reply to: We're in, Meredith posted by James Doig on May 04, 2004

: I recently read a novel published in the UK in 1938 in which one of the characters says that "We're in, Meredith" is a saying. Has anyone heard of this expression, and knows from what it derives?

: James

It is said when "one succeeds in getting into a place...just before closing time." The origin is "a music-hall sketch 'The Baliff' (or 'Moses and Son'), performed by Fred Kitchen, the leading comedian of Fred Karno's company, and first produced in 1907. The phrase was used each time a baliff and his assistant looked like gaining entrance to a house.'" From
Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day by Eric Partridge, updated and edited by Paul Beal, Scarborough House, Lanham, Md., 1992)

There's something missing out of that last sentence.