"It's like Annacker's Midden in here". It's the well-worn phrase that generations of Glasgow mums and dads have aimed at their weans to describe the state of their bedrooms.
If your room was littered with toys and stray bits of Lego or strewn with various items of clothing, you knew you were due for a proper midden shaming.
But while many Glaswegians grew up regularly hearing and using the expression, its exact origins have been almost entirely forgotten.
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In the definition provided by the Scottish National Dictionary, an "Annacker's Midden" is someone or something that's a mess or a shambles, and while that's not inaccurate, it doesn't really tell us anything about how the phrase was coined.
Some have suggested that it was derived from "a knacker's midden", meaning the rubbish heap of a place where old or injured animals were taken to be slaughtered - but this isn't right either.
It turns out that Annacker was actually a manufacturer of pork sausages that operated right here in Glasgow between 1857 and 1942.
As for the 'Annacker's Midden' saying, its origins are actually very sad and tell us a lot about the plight of the poorest in our society.
According to updated research, Annacker's "messy, scraps bins were frequently raked through by the poor, looking for something to eat".
The infamous phrase to describe a messy room became part of Glasgow parlance around the time of the First World War and it's been used ever since.
The Glasgow directory of 1858/59 contains an entry for a Mr William Annacker, a pork butcher based at Wellington Arcade at 101 Renfrew Street. Annacker later opened a sausage factory at 81 Napiershall Street and the company had around 16 retail outlets all over the city in the Edwardian era.
Interestingly, the word 'shambles' also comes from the meat industry. It refers to a slaughterhouse, a meat market, or butcher shop - hence the Medieval 'Shambles' area of York.
So, there you have it: the fascinating meaning behind Annacker's Midden. We're suddenly feeling quite peckish.
