Dear UK Dopers - Please define and expound on the meeting of the phrase ‘A Dirty Weekend.’ It is a phrase I have never heard used in the US.
I understand **’ A Dirty Weekend’ ** to be a weekend where you go off the range, spending more time than usual in pursuit of carnal pleasures than if you were staying home, catching up on laundry and small projects around the house.
Is a Dirty Weekend a fun thing, a bad thing, or just a thing? Is it shocking to say ‘I’m off with my friends for a dirty weekend?’
I’ll second that and add that if you wanted to talk about going away with friends in pusuit of possible carnal pleasures you’d say a ‘lad’s weekend’. (‘Girls’ never seem to manage a whole weekend !)
Would the married couple who left the children with doting grandparents say ‘We’re off for a dirty weekend?’ Or is that something that would be said about them, but never by them about themselves?
I think they very possibly would, but it would be in fun. A “dirty weekend” proper involves some element of the illicit – the classic stereotype was a couple who weren’t married (to each other anyway) booking into a small hotel or similar under the name of “Mr & Mrs Smith.” A married couple taking a break away together might call it that, but just as a fun way of saying they were trying to get a bit of romance back into their relationship.
It’s a slightly old-fashioned phrase – in these modern permissive times, a lot of the fun’s gone out of it.
