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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Father Steve's thread on the "Saracens at the door" made me think of how often we fall back on expressions we learn over the years. In a few words the expressions are meant to relay a set of information that a paragraphe would be needed to convey.
"I would eat chocolate off a pig's back" ...you feel like eating chocolate (or whatever else) SO much that even if it was on a pig's back you'd eat it.
BUT, if I think of many expressions I was brought up with, I realize that what is perfectly clear to me and mine, may not be clear or pertinent to others.
"I wouldn't trade it for a piece of land." ...even if you offered me a WHOLE farmstead I wouldn't give up the thing the person wants from me. Now, unless you were brought up in farming country, where land is quite valuable, this would really have no impact on you at all.
What expressions do you commonly use?
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Joined: Nov 2000
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Nov 2000
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Up to this point in my life, I have purposely tried to avoid using slang and such expressions as you refer to. At middle age, I find my parents' folksy expressions frequently coming to mind, and now, I value them and occasionally make use of them. I thought their usage would paint me as a country bumpkin; now, I see it more as a matter of undeniable heritage! I've also meticulously avoided adopting trendy, current idiom because I thought it often impeded, rather than aided, communication. Anymore I try to let myself use the expressions that I find pleasing and appropriate, instead of considering them all to be out of bounds. Besides, I appreciate such turns of phrase when others are speaking or writing. They add color. And I don't want to be speaking all in bland, neutral beige!  As for expressions I commonly use -- I am scratching my head and will have to get back to you on that!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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belM.,
I've always been one who picks up others' expressions quite easily.
Here are a few I've picked up from my Tennessee relatives:
What's that got to do with the price of green cheese on the moon?
Love (someone) to pieces.
Slow as molasses.
One that has perturbed some people of British or British-offshoot origin is 'scared to death', or even 'scared half-to-death'. Apparently, Europeans think this means literally, whereas my friends here and I just mean it as an indicator that we were more than a little startled.
My father would say a summer day was "hotter than
Billy-be-damned". (I've no idea who poor Billy was!)
I just read that Guinness (Records, all you Anglo-sousers!)
has created a--what-else--world's smallest internet ad. It is shown to fit on a bee's knee, to indicate that it is "the bee's knees".
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 347
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 347 |
Jackie, I'm not sure if you (and The Guinness BoR) use the expression differently from the one I know, or if I'm just missing the joke in the advertising campaign. I'm familiar with something being "the bee's knees" if it's the best. I'll concede it seems a really odd compliment, but I don't associate it in any way with size, per se. We'd use the expression "a bee's dick" (ruder form of "a bee's whisker" which is also used) for something tiny, often in the sense of a small margin ("he missed by a bee's dick"). http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/australia/strine/b.htm Apologies to the AWAD Filth Police for approaching the gutter again, but that expression is fairly common slang here, and not very high on the obscenity scale. While we're on the subject of insects' knees, I am reminded of the standard yardstick for shortness, as expressed in the phrase "knee-high to a grasshopper".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jackie, I'm not sure your expressions are unique to Kentucky. In my part of the world we said, "What's that got to do with the price of eggs." We also used "Love you to pieces" (but not often being an undemonstrative lot). "You scared me to death" or "half to death" was and still is very common to say you startled me or made me jump.
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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old hand
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For some reason, the only British/London expressions I can think of seem to have elements of the salacious or scatological about them.
A piece of piss, for instance, is a phrase referring to a task that is very easy to do. Why it should have taken this form I don't know.
New laddism (as in magazines like Maxim etc) have popularised the dog's bollocks - similar in usage to 'the bees knees'.
Here's another bizarre one - getting on my tits - to mean 'getting on my nerves', or 'irritating me'. Why? Not a clue.
My own 'what does that have to do with the price of...' variant is 'fish'.
I will not bore you with oodles of Bombay slang - since so much of it is not English based.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The standard response to useless information in NY is "that and a subway token will get you someplace" this is as old as the subways, and still in use.
and while I am city born and bred, as were both my parents, things are still "as crooked as a rams horn"
but I never told my children that their rooms looked "like the wreck of the Hesperis"
when I first went to London ‘70, and saw Turner's "Wreck of the Hesperis" I was in awe it still moves me–such beauty! Somehow "the wreck of the Hesperis" no longer seemed the thing to call a room with a few bits of clothes to be chucked into the hamper!
and I don't complain either that their rooms are like "dens of iniquity" When I learned what a den of iniquity was, I was of mix emotions–a bit shocked, and jealous– I wished my room had been a bit more like a den of iniquity, and not just littered with soda cans and popcorn after a gossip fest!
When my kids where young, both of us (ex and I) made a point of using as wide a vocabulary as we could, to make our kids aware. At one point, late on a weekend morning, my daughter was told to "get up out of bed with alacrity" she rolled over and told her father, if Alacrity wanted to get up, it was fine, but she wanted to sleep longer!
Its pretty hard to retain a stern parent demeanor when you're laughing as hard as we were!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs" "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off" "Older than dirt" "... since Hector was a pup" "... in a coon's age" "In hog heaven" "Happier than a pig in s@#t (or mud)" "A woman needs a man like a fish..." oh, never mind
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Anna, all of these rang a bell with me. Do you know, when I was a child, I watched my father take hold of a chicken by its head, then swing it around until the body separated from the head--and the body did run around in ragged circles for a couple of minutes. Ah, youth--I only felt a
slight revulsion then--now it would make me sick.
One of our shut-out Brits says he feels like he has been
"sent to Coventry". What is that--gaol? Speaking of British sayings (?): my mother used the phrase "carrying coals to Newcastle".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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and the body did run around in ragged circles for a couple of minutes.As a child, I used to think it was fun to watch our chickens actually flying for a minute or so after decapitation.  
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