Meat flavours

[georgeg]

Does anybody know where the expression Jumping on the "Gravy Boat" or "Gravy Train" originate???

[Aa01]

err cud possibly be... siezing the opportunity while it's there

[Kingaroo]

Ooo, ooo, I can't believe I beat Quizmonster to this one!! He must be napping!

Gravy has been used to refer to good fortune, ease, abundance, etc. since early 1900, according to World Wide Words. Nobody's exactly sure how it got linked to a train, but it may be that American railroaders referred to an easy assignment as the gravy train.

Gravy boat is more recent and probably a playful variation on the older kind of gravy transport.

[Quizmonster]

(Not napping, Kingaroo, but on a booze-cruise to France yesterday. Around here, a booze-cruise isn't a trip which you make in order to bring alcohol-supplies back, but one which you make in order to get as much alcohol down you as possible!)

'Gravy' became slang for 'money' - particularly if easily acquired - in the USA in the 1920s. The phrase 'gravy train' was also listed in 'American Speech', published in 1927, as meaning a sinecure...ie a 'job' involving pay but no actual work. Hence its modern meaning as 'any source of easy money'.

[Kingaroo]

So, QM, you were on a boozy boat, not a gravy boat--

[Aa01]

hmm... i can sense certain tensions in the air that u 2 r at each ovas throats, oh nd where abouts do the kind of boozy cruises u hav take place ?