adjective barmy, foolish. Rhyming slang, after the 1970s television comedy of the UK's World War 2 Home Guard UK, 1992

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nickname the Home Guard (1940–45); hence, any grouping of older men with a united purpose. Gently derogatory. The term survives essentially as a piece of familiar nostalgia mainly because of the popularity of BBC television comedy series Dad's Army (1968–77, and which is still being repeated today). The modern sense is therefore informed by the nature of the characters in the programme; variously bumptious and bumbling, etc UK, 1968