Where does the saying?

Question

Gone for a Burton.....come from.

Answer 1

Montague Burton was a well known tailor during WW II.

Airmen that died were said to have "Gone for a Burton" as they would be buried in their best civillian clothes

NB:

The Liz Taylor comments are from well after the phrase became known and the Bass beer adverts also played on an already common phrase.

Answer 2

Bass beer of Burton on Trent ran adverts which said people had gone to the pub or 'Gone for a Burton'

Answer 3

"Gone for a Burton" is a British slang term which translates roughly as "out to lunch," "missing" or, applied to a machine such as your friend's computer, "not functioning."

It seems to be generally accepted that "gone for a Burton" is World War II-vintage Royal Air Force slang, first appearing in print in 1941. The original meaning of the term was a bit of black humor, much grimmer than the modern usage. It referred to a flier (at best) missing in action, or (at worst) definitely killed, someone who had, in the equivalent American phrase of the same period, "bought the farm."

The question of who or what the "Burton" in question might have been, however, has led to several theories. Montague Burton, goes one explanation, was a firm of tailors in Britain known for their fine suits. According to this theory, the phrase sardonically suggested that a missing flier had gone off to be fitted for a suit. Other theories involved the inflatable "Brethon" life jackets at one time issued by the RAF.

The most convincing explanation, however, traces "Burton" to pre-war British slang. The popular line of Bass Ales were brewed in the town of Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England, and a glass of ale was known colloquially as simply "a Burton." Evidently the Bass brewery sponsored a series of advertisements shortly before the war, each of which involved a situation in which one person was clearly missing, as indicated by an empty chair at a dinner table or the like. The "tag line" of each ad was the same: "Gone for a Burton."

Since this phrase was already imprinted on the public imagination by the advertisements, it would have been a logical candidate for a catch phrase used to explain the disappearance of a comrade in battle.

Answer 4

It means "gone without trace, disappeared, "scarperred".


In informal British English, something or someone who has gone for a Burton is missing; a thing so described might be permanently broken, missing, ruined or destroyed. The original sense was to meet one’s death, a slang term in the RAF in World War Two for pilots who were killed in action (its first recorded appearance in print was in the New Statesman on 30 August 1941).

Answer 5

When Elizabeth Burton was absent from the set one day when she should have been shooting. It was asked, "Where is Elizabeth?" The assistant director responded, "gone for a Burton." (He was being facetious)
It now is synonymous with getting some in during the day. A nooner so to speak.
Of course, I made all this up. I don't know really.

Answer 6

"Gone for a Burton" is a British slang term which translates roughly as "out to lunch," "missing" or, applied to a machine such as your friend's computer, "not functioning."

Answer 7

This saying came about when a Film Studio executive once asked the whereabouts of Elizabeth Taylor.
It was also repeated many years later.

Answer 8

English saying.meaning gone, missing, caput, no longer, broken. useless.

Answer 9

It comes from deep inside each one of us.

Answer 10

never heard that one, either, but hay - 2 points.