On my way home from work, I pass the windowless side of an end-of-terrace house, on which this sign is posted:
Such signs are a common sight in England, and not immediately transparent to AmE speakers, who are more accustomed to 'No dumping' signs:
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| from SmartSign.com |
(There's more we could say about these signs, but we haven't got space for that right now. For more on NO TRESPASSING, see this old post on AmE POSTED signs.)
The Brighton sign is an official local-government sign, while anyone can buy those US examples. The equivalent anyone-can-buy it signs in the UK might have both the terms tipping and dumping:
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| from morelock.co.uk |
Tipping (first cited UK early 1800s), like dumping, relates to tipping, and thereby releasing, the contents of a truck or cart into an area for waste, hence BrE tip for what AmE would call dump: a (probably official) place where the waste from a particular area can be left (for processing, piling up, burial, etc.). The verb dump ('to fall with sudden force') goes back to Middle English, but it's only in the late 1700s, in the US, that it starts to be used transitively to refer particularly to getting rid of waste. (See this old post for more on AmE dumpster. See the comments of this old post for discussion of dump truck.)
Tipping or dumping could be legal, but fly-tipping is specifically 'illegal dumping'. Why fly? It's not to do with the insects that inevitably follow illegal dumping. It's the fly in the expression on the fly: that is, in motion or 'on the wing'. Dumping/tipping that is "on the fly" is without prior arrangement and probably surreptitious. You're taking a load of waste away from where it's not needed, and you just leave it someplace that is conveniently unobserved. The term fly-tipping is first noted by the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1960s, and the back-formed verb fly-tip only comes up in the 1980s.
On the fly developed different uses in BrE and AmE in the mid-1800s. In BrE it could be a slang term for begging (or committing crimes) while moving about/around town. (See Green's Dictionary of Slang.) With that extension, fly-tipping makes some sense as a term for an illegal activity. In AmE, on the fly became a description of a baseball that's been hit, but has not yet touched the ground—so you want to catch the other team's ball on the fly. (The term fly ball comes some decades later, as a result.)
fly-posting
If you know that fly-tipping is illegally dumping waste "on the fly", then it's easier to see what BrE fly-posting means: putting up posters on the move—all over town. (Often, but not necessarily, illegally.) If you don't make the on the fly connection, you might think it's about posting (orig. AmE) flyers (late 1800s). But since flyer also comes from that same 'quickly, while moving' sense of fly, you're not far off.
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| From a Brighton & Hove News article "Council brings in new rules to tackle flyposting and stickering" |
An earlier term for this is bill-sticking (late 1700s, esp. in 1800s), which one occasionally still sees in the UK, especially the agentive noun bill-sticker. We rarely call flyers or posters bills or handbills these days, but that's what they were from the late 1700s and into the 20th century.
While it's possible to find uses of fly-posting in the US, it's a much rarer term there. Instead of signs saying No Flyposting you might see a stencil(l)ed Post No Bills.
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| (From Alex Westerman's essay about POST NO BILLS in New York City.) |
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| from Pittsburgh Orbit |
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| from Bill Posters Soundcloud |
![Battered metal sign, red with white lettering: G [crown graphic] R – POST NO BILLS](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_EiQJLoDLg3jqjh-98pfCVqRk_0tmXPk5LuyEsQoDrJBzW4Bw9w5XecSLWH-o76hhKpVYqZLy8zRxW9MslP8Yg5wR4aYCBu6Muyykiy8qo-uFG1o-oVI_R1YC77pxPo8ervm2ViFHDbSS0ybzSikS5baADHmYxePHDby-natzBkYdbnLV4AQ/s733/Screenshot%202025-08-10%20at%2012.50.18.png) |
| From GWRA auctions |
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ReplyDeleteThere's another form of "dump" that one probably should not be doing in public places. Probably derived from the above and perhaps UK only?
ReplyDeleteNot UK only—in fact, UK got it from US: https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/6tjajea
DeleteAnd I've learned something today!
DeleteMe too - I was not sure which variety of English it came from, so thanks, Lynne!
DeleteWhen I was little (we're talking about London in the late 1950s), you would see signs saying "Bill Stickers Will Be Prosecuted" (as opposed to the USEng "Bill Posters". And I wondered who he was, and why he should be prosecuted, so my mother had to explain! They stopped posting them after the graffiti "Bill Stickers is innocent, ok?" began to appear....
ReplyDeleteFly-grazing is another related form I've seen used, referring to horses being put out on random scrappy fields often in the urban fringe.
ReplyDeleteAnd, presumably, this use of "bills" is related to the Parliamentary term? Were laws originally posted in public places? Although I would be surprised to learn the scofflaws were literate enough for it to make much difference at that time!
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, so this would have been 1980s SE England, I can remember one piece of street furniture that had 'post no bills' written on it. I knew the box was something to do with electricity or some public utility and I can remember asking my parents what it meant. In my head, I thought they were telling people not to stick their electricity bills on the box (in protest, or to show they'd been paid).
ReplyDeleteI remember reading that J.R.R. Tolkien used to tell his children bedtime stories about a villain called Bill Stickers (who, of course, was always going to be prosecuted).
ReplyDelete