Origin
"Take the piss" may be a reference to a related (and dated) idiomatic expression, piss-proud. This is a vulgar pun referring to the morning erections men frequently experience, which have long been popularly attributed to arising from a full bladder, and thus could be considered a "false" erection. In a metaphoric sense, then, someone who is "piss-proud" would suffer from false pride, and taking the piss out of them refers to deflating this false pride, through disparagement or mockery. As knowledge of the expression's metaphoric origin became lost on users, "taking the piss out of" came to be synonymous with disparagement or mockery itself, with less regard to the pride of the subject.
"Take the mickey" may be an abbreviated form of the Cockney rhyming slang "take the mickey bliss", a euphemism for "take the piss." It has also been suggested that "Mickey" is a contraction of "micturate" (urine), in which case "take the micturate" would be a synonymous euphemism for "take the piss." The phrase has been noted since the 1930s.
Read more about this topic: Taking The Piss
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