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I am studying Roald Dahl's The BFG and I am confused by a couple of passages.

Context: The Big Friendly Giant suggests that the soldiers leave the helicopter and then drive Jeeps to man-eating Giants' sleeping place.

...the BFG told him, ‘But if you is taking these sloshbuckling noisy bellypoppers any closer, all the giants is waking up at once and then pop goes the weasel.’ (p.179)

And

Context:The Big Friendly Giant refused to tell the Queen the whereabouts of the Giant Country.

‘No, Majester,’ the BFG said. ‘Not on my nelly.’

I searched online. I found that "weasel and stoat" is rhyming slang for "throat". Is it correct to think that the soldiers' throats will be gone if the Giants are awake? And is ‘Not on my nelly’ a word play for "Not on your life?"

Could you please help me work out the meaning of these two phrases?

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    Where do weasel and stoat come into it? You didn't quote that bit.
    – ralph.m
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 10:10
  • The whole paragraph is: 'I don't see any giants,' the Head of of the Army said. 'The giants is all just out of sight over there,' the BFG told him, ‘But if you is taking these sloshbuckling noisy bellypoppers any closer, all the giants is waking up at once and then pop goes the weasel.’ 'So you want us to proceed by jeep?' the Head of the Army said.
    – Gonni
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 10:20
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    If you're trying to learn English, I'd be extremely careful about using something like the BFG as a "study aid". It's supposed to be "amusing" for native speakers who (even as young children) will easily recognize his constant misuse of English. For example, there's no such word as sloshbuckling, no-one ever says not on my Nellie (it's always your Nellie), and all the giants is waking up is a basic error that even the average three-year-old would recognize and laugh at.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 13:26

2 Answers 2

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You are correct about "not on your nelly":

not on your nelly
(idiomatic, Cockney rhyming slang) not on your life, an emphatic form of no.

(Wiktionary)

Nelly Duff: (UK) Nelly Duff = puff (breath) 'Not on your Nelly' is used to mean 'Not on your life'.

(english-for-students.com)

As you can see, "nelly" is an abbreviated "nelly duff" (breath), and breath by extension means life. Hence, "not on your life".

I'm not sure about "pop goes the weasel" in this context, but let me guesstimate that contextually this is roughly equivalent to "all hell will break loose".

If all hell breaks loose, a situation suddenly becomes noisy and violent, usually with a lot of people arguing or fighting

(FreeDictionary.com)

In the context, the BFG doesn't want to wake the giants, or noisy violence would apparently ensue.

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    I agree with your suggestion for 'pop goes the weasel' here. It's a very rich phrase used in a variety of ways en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Goes_the_Weasel
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 10:45
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    youtube.com/watch?v=gSe0l2zurKg
    – TimR
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 11:20
  • @Dan: I must have heard Pop Goes the Weasel‎ thousands of times, but almost always when reciting or referencing the nursery rhyme (where it's uncertain what if anything it "meant" originally). In fact, OP's cited example is probably the only context I've ever encountered where it could be said to "mean" anything at all in current English. It's about as meaningful as saying I'm just going to gyre and gimble in the wabe (meaning little more than I can recite fragments of children's doggerel).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 13:46
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    @Dan: Hmm. All I can say is that in this specific case no-one knows what Pop goes the weasel originally meant. Technically speaking the same is true of, say, A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down!, though most people think they know it's about dying of plague. But regardless of (possible) original meanings, such fragments aren't actually used today with any significant semantic content. It's not like quoting To be or not to be, for example, which normally does have a fairly clear meaning at time of utterance.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 14:48
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    @Dan: A couple of weeks ago I heard Marge Simpson say Run, Bart! Run like the wind! - which she pronounced as wined. When Lisa corrected her, Marge said Well, I only ever read it in books. I think in 3 decades time - let alone 3 centuries - people who want to learn English as a second language will focus far more on things that people are actually saying, rather than studying things that (often, now dead) people once wrote.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 15:57
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Up and down the city road
in and out the eagle,
thats the way the money goes...
Pop! Goes the weasel.

In cloth making, the machine that wound the yarn was called the weasel. Every 1,000 yards, the machine made a popping sound, thus "Pop! goes the weasel." (lifted from wikipedia.) The phrase suggests that all has, or will go wrong, up and down the city road in and out the eagle...the eagle and child was a pub. So repeated visits may have led to a lack of clarity etc therefore Pop goes..

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  • But the song is the standard one for a musical jack-in-the-box, and when "pop goes the weasel" is played is when the "jack" pops out of the box. To the unsuspecting first-time user of the toy this is a big, scary surprise. (Besides, everyone knows it's "All around the mulberry bush...".)
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Nov 1, 2016 at 0:08

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