Fanny Adams
Fanny Adams noun: tinned meat.
Noun
Fanny Adams (uncountable)
- Tinned meat.
- The Engineer Lieutenant pushed his head inside his neighbour's cabin: “Come along—come along! You'll be late for dinner. Fresh grub to-night: no more ‘Russian Kromeskis’ and ‘Fanny Adams’!”1916, Bartimeus [pseudonym; Sir Lewis Ritchie], Naval Occasions, and Some Traits of the Sailor-man, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons
- Synonyms:
- Harriet Lane
- Nothing (now largely perceived as euphemistic for fuck all).
Synonyms of Fanny Adams
Forms of Fanny Adams
| alternative form | sweet Fanny Adams |
|---|---|
| alternative form | sweet FA |
| alternative form | SFA |
Origin of Fanny Adams
From Fanny Adams (1859–1867), a young girl brutally murdered and dismembered. Tins of mutton introduced in the British navy after her death were not liked by the sailors and were humorously said to be her butchered remains. Fanny Adams then came to mean any worthless thing, and, eventually, nothing at all ("sweet F A"). Coincidentally, the initials "FA" also fit the vulgar term fuck all, also meaning "nothing at all", leading to later perception of "Fanny Adams", or "FA", being a euphemism for the latter.
Questions about Fanny Adams
- What does Fanny Adams mean?
- Fanny Adams means tinned meat.
- What part of speech is Fanny Adams?
- Fanny Adams is a noun.
Words near Fanny Adams in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Fanny Adams (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-Fanny Adams.ogg.
Cite this entry: “Fanny Adams.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fanny_adams. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.