Gnats pee

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on September 02, 2005

In Reply to: Gnats pee posted by James Briggs on September 01, 2005

: : I would love to know Origin of the phrase 'it tastes like gnat's pee'.

: I doubt there's an 'origin'. This is a phrase that just seems to have crept into UK English and, perhaps, elsewhere. I remember it as being used over 50 years ago. It's usually confined to describing weak tea (or coffee also these days). Derogatory.

I'd add that the original term is "gnat's piss", and most people in the UK who use the phrase at all use it in that form. The general feeling seems to be that if you're going to use a crude metaphor there's no point in trying to be genteel about it.