Currently watching the Endeavour series, set in 1960s England. In a recent episode, one character asked the other, “much in?” This appears to be an English colloquialism, and a Google search hasn’t turned up a clear answer as to what it means. Can anyone here explain?
Context would probably make it clearer, but from your brief description it would appear to just be a shortening of “is there much in?”, so a couple of coppers might be asking if there were a lot of new cases overnight for example.
No, it’s not. Presumably it’s something like “has much come in?” Context would help.
The two lead characters, Morse and Thursday, often carpool to work. One morning, Morse was picking Thursday up at Thursday’s house. I don’t remember all that was said - it wasn’t much - before Thursday asks Morse, “much in?”. They both work the same day shift, so it doesn’t seem like Morse would have any more info than Thursday about what new cases might have come in recently. Sorry I can’t provide much more detail; it was a couple of episodes ago now (we’re binging), not sure exactly which episode and not sure which moment in that episode, so it’d be difficult to find again. Just had me scratching my head trying to figure out what was meant.
I’m not familiar with the show or the characters but I would pretty comfortably bet it was merely Thursday asking a question but shortening it. He would be asking about something in the earlier conversation.
What was the reply to the question?
Notwithstanding your last sentence, this almost certainly means “Have any [interesting] new cases come in?” just as @CardboardBoxx guessed earlier. (For those who aren’t aware, Morse is a detective.)
I don’t have a factual answer for the OP, but I will say that Brits do use the same words that we do often with different meanings, so it’s entirely possible that ‘much in?’ could be a Britishism.
One thing I’ve noticed quite often watching Brit shows is the different meaning they apply to the word ‘brilliant’. When Americans use the word it’s pretty exclusively meant as ‘genius’ or ‘extremely clever’; whereas, Brits often use it to mean ‘terrific’ or ‘wonderful’, as in:
“I got tickets to that show you wanted to see.”
“Brilliant!”
This is true, but we use it your way too, as in ‘Have you seen Professor Bloggs speak? He’s quite brilliant’. In this context, it would be ‘he’s a genius at what he does’.
In the context you used above, ‘brilliant’ replaces ‘great’.
much in? in the context given is absolutely a question about whether any interesting cases or leads have come in, nothing more interesting or cryptic than that
From what I remember, Morse would sometimes stay late or start work early, so he would know if something new had turned up that Thursday had not yet heard of.
If only there were some way to discover this.
It means: “has there been many new work/cases/etc”.
If you’re referring to Google, I tried that. The results show that there are countless ways that particular sequence of words can be used in a sentence (“Slang, like everything else, changes much in the course of time…”), but there are no results indicating a particular meaning of “much in” as a standalone inquiry.
No, I was joking - I meant asking a British person, like the several who had already replied to this thread.
Is this supposed to be sarcasm? Though the prevailing thread opinion seems to be leaning toward “it just means ‘has much come in?’, nothing more” I haven’t seen any definitive proof of the matter here either way.
Also, as I pointed out in my post that you quoted part of, common words and phrases shared in American and British English can have subtly different meanings, such as the word ‘brilliant’.
Were you not aware that most of the people replying are British? It just struck me as funny that after several British people had answered the question (all in agreement), you chimed in as though we have no way to find out for sure about the unfathomable mysteries of British usage…
Yes, it’s certainly not a specific British idiom. But it still probably helps to be British and to know that it’s not idiomatic in order to decipher the terse question in context.
No, I was not aware of that. Perhaps you know some of the posters to be Brits from other threads, but I just reread this short thread to see if I’m missing anything, and I see what appear to be opinions from a handful of posters, none of whom as far as I can tell identify themselves in this thread as British; well, other than @SanVito, who in any case didn’t have an opinion on the OP’s question.
It was only intended as a throwaway joke, I apologize if I offended you. In FQ, I would have thought it was assumed that OP was looking for answers from British people. I didn’t know either from memory that @CardboardBoxx is British, but I assumed so from the way they answered (as am I).