‘Praying at the porcelain altar’ is a comic reference to kneeling and vomiting down the toilet.
Praying at the porcelain altar
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Praying at the porcelain altar'?
What's the origin of the phrase 'Praying at the porcelain altar'?
This is one of the colourful phrases coined by, or at least popularized by, the Australian comedian Barry Humphries during the 1970s in his Barry McKenzie column in Private Eye.
Humphries is a master at such earthy language and has a repertoire of phrase for vomiting, coined or collected in his native Australia. He could hardly do better than study the works of a previous master collector – Francis Grose. In the 1785 version of his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, he lists ‘Admiral of the Narrow Seas’ as:
“One who drunkenly vomits into the lap of one who sits next to him.”
See other phrases first recorded by Captain Francis Grose.
See also: ‘point Percy at the porcelain‘.
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