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Today, I was talking with a coworker about a person from whom I was having trouble getting information. We were talking French and I used a very common expression. I said "It's like pulling worms from his nose." (C'est comme lui tirer les vers du nez. Well actually,  I was talking Québécois so I said, "ouin, c'est comme y tirer é vers du nez." ) Now, every French Québecer knows this means you have a hard time getting information from somebody, but if you look at the sentence there is absolutely no way you could guess its meaning. Do you know of any other expressions like this?
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Like pulling hen's teeth.
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"This dog won't hunt" (used mostly in the Southern United States.
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"Put paid to" never made sense to me. It sounds like it should mean something like "paid off any obligations" as in "I put paid to my car a month ago, so I don't have to worry about car payments for a while."
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bel, a warning: Faldage is conflating two expressions. "Like pulling teeth" is the expression equivalent to your gross one.  "Rare as hen's teeth" is something else -- do you have an equivalent for that?
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Off the top of my head, I can't think of any expression that is similar to "rare as hen's teeth."
I don't think I'd be confused about what that expression meant if I heard it though. Same with "it's like pulling teeth."
Both seem very self-explanatory, whereas, if you look at the worms expression, you don't automatically think that it means it was hard to get information from the guy.
I seems odd to create an expression that isn't readily understandable.
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seems odd to create an expression that isn't readily understandable.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less about that. You're really looking out through your eyeballs.
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Actually, my mother used to say "like pulling hen's teeth". ANother one was "like nailing jelly to the wall" when it was hard to get an opinion from someone. But what about something like "I wish he'd pull up his socks"? How would you know that meant "I wish he'd smarten up"?
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The one I hate is "I could care less about that". Someday I'll have to kill someone and bury them in the rose garden.
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Right on, Creith, bury him right next to him who has said "I don't have a problem with that". 
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