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Glite Dictionary
🥫 Tinned meat 0️⃣ Nothing at all
Fanny Adams

Fanny Adams

9.9
Canned meat of poor quality often eaten by sailors
  • noun
  • /ˈfæn.i ˈæd.əmz/
  • Archaic
translation icon : carne enlatada
  • After weeks at sea, we grew tired of eating nothing but Fanny Adams from cans.

Examples

  • The sailors complained about the Fanny Adams served at every meal during the voyage.

  • I can't believe we're having Fanny Adams for dinner!

  • Stories about the origins of the term Fanny Adams circulated around the ship's mess hall.

  • They served Fanny Adams on the ship during the voyage.

  • After weeks at sea, we grew tired of eating nothing but Fanny Adams from cans.

  • The sailors complained about the Fanny Adams served at every meal during the voyage.

  • I can't believe we're having Fanny Adams for dinner again!

Surface Forms

Fanny Adams singular
Fanny Adams plural

Morphology

Fanny + Adams

The meaning 'nothing at all' is idiomatic and cannot be inferred from the literal proper names 'Fanny' and 'Adams', which give no semantic clue to the idiom. The expression is culturally and historically grounded (and often appears as 'sweet Fanny Adams'), so a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words would not predict its meaning.

Etymology

Fanny Adams began as sailor slang for 'tinned meat'. One popular story says sailors would open a can, find poor food, and call it Fanny Adams, so the name came to mean poor-quality canned meat.