Last night I was searching for a .WAV sound clip from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The clip I’m after is of a genie (from Aladdin’s lamp, of course) saying, “Three cheers and a tiger for me!”
I never found the clip, but I got curious about the phrase. Googling on it got me a reference to this site , which includes in the definition for “Tiger:”
*4. A kind of growl or screech, after cheering; as, three
cheers and a tiger. [Colloq. U. S.]
*
Now, I’m from the U.S., and I’m as colloq. as you can get, but this is a new one on me. To what are they referring? Is it something along the lines of, “Rah! Rah! Rah! Grrrrrr!” Has anyone heard this before?
RR
You aren’t familar with it because the phrase is very dated. It was common in the 20s and 30s, but has died out in everyday use since then, sort of like “23 skiddoo” (though that’s famous enough that people still know about it, though they’d never use it themselves).
Thanks for the responses. I love the link, Ice Wolf. I noticed on thatpage there was a reference to a phrase I first ran across in a Terry Pratchett book: “to see the elephant.” I need to reread the book – Witches Abroad, I think – and check up on it. I think TP may have used the phrase incorrectly, which would be unusual.
RR
Someone had an add-a-puss complex.
funeefarmer posted a link and quoted from it in this thread.