Where did "gone for a burton" come from?

Answer 1

It's a type of beer originally brewed at Burton on Trent. During the 1930s, there was a series of advertisements where someone was missing because he'd gone for a Burton. During the second World War, if an airman didn't return from a mission he was said to be gone for a Burton.

Answer 2

I belive it was after the second world war.

Troops that were being Demobilised were given a free suit on discharge from the service. I think Burtins The clothes retailer had something to do with the supply of suits.

So if you asked where someone was and they had already been discharged people would say " he has gone for a Burton" (Suit)

Meaning he has left or been discharged, anyway we now use to mean some one has left or gone.

Answer 3

It's something to do with Burtons the men's outfitters. It's quite an old company, so it may be when men came home from the war and went to Burtons for a de-mob suit. I don't know why it has come to mean something a bit dubious though.

Answer 4

"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 5

go to buyy a burton