Where does the saying 'popped his clogs' come from?

An old Lancs/Yorks saying meaning the wife has pawned his clogs(footwear worn in the Northern industries) because he has died.


A lot older than the 70%26#039;s and hard for you youngsters to believe, well before television.

Where does the saying %26#039;popped his clogs%26#039; come from?
maybe in Russia.coz that%26#039;s where clogs originate
Reply:pop your clogs (British, humorous) to die
Reply:Popping something referred to going down to the Pawn shop.


So, perhaps when it says %26#039;He popped his clogs%26#039; maybe it meant he had a premonition he was about to leave this world and so didn%26#039;t need his clogs - but might have needed a strong drink instead.
Reply:I dunno for sure but it reminds me of the sad sight of someones shoes lying on the road metres from their body after they%26#039;ve been hit by a car. Maybe peoples shoes fall off more easily when they%26#039;re dead. As for country of origin ...it%26#039;s got a British sound to it even though clogs are a bit Dutch





Now I%26#039;ll need to have a slang hunt online (c;


...ooh no need I can just read the other answers ...I had no idea clogs were so popular in Britain!
Reply:It is mainly a British English slang expression, dating, so far as I can gather from the few slang and idiom dictionaries that cite it, only from the 1970s. The impression is that it seems to have either originated in — or been popularised by — television presenters and disc jockeys.





Clogs were the traditional workers’ footwear in several trades in the industrial towns and cities of midlands and northern Britain, for women as well as men, now rarely seen but at one time almost an icon of working class life. The sound of workers’ clogs on cobbled streets at the end of a shift has been likened to thunder.





The verb to pop may be the old term for pawning goods. The implication is that someone would only want to pawn his clogs when he had no further need for them, that is, when he was about to die. But it’s also possible that it’s linked to the idiom to pop off (an abbreviation of pop off the hooks), which can also mean to die.



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