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The Masterson Inheritance

This page is for those Masterson fans who want to know what goose-upping involves, and why the line about lockets and getting a cough is funny.

If you come across any phrases or words in an episode that you would like to see on this page, contact me and I'll do my best to translate!


Getting on someone's wick
If someone is getting on your wick, they are annoying you, getting on your nerves. See "Beware the Ides of Masterson".

Goose-upping
A suggestion in "The Mastersons Christmas Cracker". This is presumably the goose equivalent of swan-upping, which my dictionary defines as "the annual taking up and marking of Thames swans".

Knackered
Very tired, exhausted. The dictionary tells me that the word knacker when used as a noun is a "buyer of old horses, cattle etc. for slaughter". To knacker means "to exhaust, wear out (18th century in the sense 'old or worn-out horse')". So, next time you have to run for a train, you can shout out, "I'm knackered!" and know what it means. This word appears in "Beware the Ides of Masterson".

Locket
In "Scurvy!", Josie gives Paul a locket, and he says "But, supposing you get a sore throat?". "Lockets" are a brand of cough sweets.

Molyneux
One of Paul's lines in "Scurvy!" - "I'm going to another land, somewhere that isn't home, somewhere that's away. A bit like the way when West Bromwich Albion play Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molyneux they could be considered away and not at home." A soccer reference - Molyneux being the home ground of Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Nobby Stiles and Asa Hartford
Josie mentions these two people in "Scurvy!" Soccer players - Nobby Stiles playing in the 1966 World Cup winning England squad, and Asa Hartford was a Scottish international.

Suffragette chaining herself to a horse
This suggestion from "The Masterson Bunch" sounds ridiculous but actually has its origins in fact - in 1913 a suffragette died by throwing herself in front of the horses racing in the Derby to publicise her cause.

Tatting
The suggestion for the title of an episode, unsurprisingly from "The Tatting of the Mastersons". The dictionary says "a kind of knotted lace made by hand with a small shuttle and used for trimming etc.". And ponchos, of course.

This page created with the assistance of the Oxford Concise English Dictionary!