Home » Segments » Put Up Your Dukes

Put Up Your Dukes

“Put up your dukes!” means “Get ready to fight!” But its etymology is a bit uncertain. One story goes that it’s from Cockney rhyming slang, in which dukes is short for Dukes of York, a play on the slang term fork, meaning “hand.” But the phrase more likely originated from or was influenced by a Romany word involving hands. This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

Boodle on Beaver Island

A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...