What does "been through the mill" mean to you? I used it in one of my limericks in OEDILF, and someone questioned the meaning. I found a site that defines it as being "worn out;" is that accurate?

The limerick was about "asthenia" where patients are debilitated from a severe illness (usually cancer or AIDS), and the last line contained that phrase.

I've always seen it as something akin to "been to Hell and back" - that is, having had a really rough time of it.

In my experience it means being used up, worn out, generally because of a real trial or hard work or extreme difficulty.

Cat's definition works for the limerick, but I am not sure Jo's does. I meant it to mean that you are so weak and debilitated that, as Cat said, the patient has been really having a rough time (been through the mill).

Here is the limerick:

Asthenia's seen when you're ill;
You're too weak to just swallow a pill.
You're thin and don't eat;
To read is a feat.
You feel like you've been through the mill!

Kalleh, I know it's used in this Cole Porter song, Love for Sale:

Love for sale.
Appetizing, young love for sale.
Love that's fresh and still unspoiled. Love that's only slighty soiled.
Love for sale.

Who will buy?
Who will like to sample my supply?
Who's prepared to pay the price for a trip to paradise?
Love for sale.

Let the poets pipe of love in their childish way.
I know every type of love better far than they.
If you want the thrill of love I've been through the mill of love.
Old love. New love. Every love, but true love.

Love for sale.
Appetizing young love for sale.
If you want to buy my wares, follow me and climb the stairs.
Love for sale.


I've also seen that line quoted as "I've been through the mid'l of love" but whenever I've heard it recorded, it's been "through the mill". I've still not found any actual origin of the phrase . . . but I'll see what I can find at work.

I've wanted to use the phrase recently, and also been through the wringer to mean the same thing.

"Been through the middle of" looks like a folk etymology or mondegreen by someone who doesn't understand or hasn't heard the expression "been through the mill of". It's phonetically plausible: "middle" does tend to lose its [d] to the following [l].

This message has been edited. Last edited by: aput,

"Through the mill" means to me that you have been put through a difficult experience and have come out figuratively crushed - just as would grain when it had been through the flour-mill.

My late uncle (Arthur English) who started his career (as did so many comedians) at the Windmill Theatre in London, entitled his autobiography "Through the Mill - and beyond"

US readers may not have heard of him as a comedian (he was, after all, at his comedic peak in the 1950s) but will possibly know him through his role as Mr Harman in "Are you being served".

My late uncle (Arthur English) who started his career (as did so many comedians) at the Windmill Theatre in London

I hadn't known, Richard. Now I know where you got your sense of humor. Here's a great photo of the man himself with a very wide tie on.

Arthur English! How marvelous...

Maybe all you Anglophiles can help me with a memory problem...

There was a wonderful British radio show we used to listen to, and I cannot remember the name of it anymore. It was so hysterically funny I would sometimes get tummy aches laughing. The one episode I remember most vividly was taking Dartmoor Prison on holiday by sailing it out in the Channel. I do believe I first heard Bucket of Bricks on that show.

Was it the Goon Show? Or some other name? And if someone recognizes it, do they have tapes of it extant anywhere?

My late aunt Ivy made Arthur's tie from old curtain material and he was reluctant to wear his first one when he went to an audition with Vivian Van Damm (the boss of the Windmill). But he did and he got the job.

Incidentally, he had no moustache as his hair was too fair and light for him to grow one. However, as his character was that of a spiv, and as spivs often effected pencil-line moustaches (see Pte Walker in Dad's Army), he had to paint one on. This nearly led to confusion when Van Damm asked to see him after the audition and he had by then wiped it off.

Van Damm said, "No, not you - I want the man with the little moustache". To which Arthur replied, "...Well, if it's not me I'm sleeping with his wife"

"You've got the job!" said Van Damm!

Quote "...The one episode I remember most vividly was taking Dartmoor Prison on holiday by sailing it out in the Channel. I do believe I first heard Bucket of Bricks on that show...."

I can't recall that particular episode but it certainly sounds like the Goon Show. The Good Show scripts, incidentally, were written in a pub called The Grafton in Strutton Ground and, until a few years ago, many of the original scripts adorned the walls. Now it's been acquired by a pub company who've turned it into a stupid Irish theme bar and disposed of the scripts. They deserve to be shot.

The story you call "Bucket of Bricks" is, I suspect, Gerrard Hoffnung's famous Bricklayer's story from his speech at the Oxford Union. http://www.livejournal.com/users/nitemirror/122128.html?mode=reply Incidentally, so well does Hoffnung tell this story, and so magnificent is his timing, that very few people realise how short it actually is and most would guess it as being around 1,500 wprds. But count them and be amazed.

Not Goon Show material at all; the Goon show was very surreal, although as a schoolboy I didn't realise that at the time.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Richard English,

thank you, Richard. It was the Goon Show. We used to listen to it every Sunday morning, Morgan and I. He loved it, said it gave him a good excuse to have a fine British ale on Sunday morning. LOL...

and I'll be darned if I didn't find http://www.goon.org/