black as Newgate's knocker
A vivid British simile meaning completely, utterly black — as dark as the famous iron knocker on the gate of Newgate Prison, London's most notorious jail.
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Born ~1902 · no dated citations yetDefinitions
A vivid British simile meaning completely, utterly black — as dark as the famous iron knocker on the gate of Newgate Prison, London's most notorious jail. The phrase dates back centuries and trades on Newgate's grim reputation: everything associated with it was dark, forbidding, and heavy. Used to describe anything from overcast skies to scorched toast to a blackened cooking pot, it has the dour wit characteristic of working-class London speech, and still pops up in older British writing and regional dialogue.
He came back from fixing the boiler with his hands and face black as Newgate's knocker, grinning like it was all a great joke.
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(UK, simile) Completely black in colour.
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🇬🇧About British & Irish slang slang
UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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