there's nowt so queer as folk

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

there's nowt so queer as folk

1. (simile, colloquial, Yorkshire, Lancashire) Nothing is as strange as people can be; people can behave very oddly sometimes.
   • 1893, Bell, Florence Eveleen Eleanore; Robins, Elizabeth, Alan's Wife‎, act 1, scene 1, pages 11–12:

     Well (shakes her head with a little smile as she goes on knitting)—there's nowt so queer as folk! (Shakes her head again.)

   • 1911, Rawnsley, Hardwicke Drummond, “Sexton Joe”, in By Fell and Dale at the English Lakes‎, pages 87–88:

     'Theer's Miss So-and-so bin doon here and gaan on ivver so and glen me sic a blackin' as never was, becos I telt her I cudn't git her intil t' auld grund noa-ways, and I telt her she mud just lig in t' new grund and mud be weel content, an aw, for it was a deal sweeter.' 'And,' added old Joe, ' theer's nowt so queer as folk, specially wick uns.'

   • c. 1936, Rogers, Clement Francis, “Are Miracles Possible?”, in The Case for Miracle‎, pages 26–27:

     Long ago Aristotle said that you cannot expect to find the same accuracy in all thought as in mathematics—you can only get it as far as the nature of the subject allows. The human factor has to be reckoned with and, as they say in Yorkshire: "There's nowt so queer as folk."

   • 1971 July 1, Turnbull, Don, “Ye Second Birthday Editorial”, in Albion‎, number 30, page 2:

     The really remarkable thing about ALBION is the amazing number of people it continues to hoodwink. Nearly 100 subscribers now, all persisting in sending their cash to the Editorial Permanence In Drunkenness Fund. A growth-rate of approximately one new subscriber per week! How you can all tolerate this I cannot understand; however, as they say across the frontier into Yorkshire - 'There's nowt so queer as folk' (being married to a Yorkshirewoman, I subscribe whole-heartedly to this view)