British idiom for "shut the door"

Whilst the internet seems to think of this as a broad English expression, I really only ever encountered it Oop North in the North Midlands and Yorkshire. The most-heard version of the expression ("put wood in hole" as featured on Urban Dictionary) supports this. In th Yorkshire dialect, the word "the" is oft abbreviated to "t'" and falls silent in the mouths of Northerners. Try it yourself: "put t'wood in t'hole"; the t is soon unpronounced and vanishes quickly. Not that Northern English is lazy, it's just that repeated consonants are tough to use and something gets dropped. Growing up and going to school at the southern edge of the Yorkshire dialect's influence, I heard quite a bit of this (or rather, didn't hear!)

My father was quite fond of this phrase, along with "We aren't paying to heat the whole street!" and "Were you raised in a barn?", thus encouraging me to close doors, especially those to the outside. I'm still in his mindset on this one. Brevity Quest 2024


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