Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Dec 13 - 09:43 AM

Of a brutally plain-spoken person: "He's not afraid to call a spade a dirty damned shovel!"

Someone asks me, "How are you this morning?" I answer,
"Oh, I think I'll last at least as long as lunch!" I'll often add, "That's called limited objectives."

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,jack
Date: 25 Aug 15 - 10:40 PM

my mother always said "skin a cat" to us when removing our t-shirts as small children. we, too, would call it "skinny cat". mom was born in texas, grew up in kansas and told us this in california

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 03:13 AM

My mother was full of pithy, sometimes bawdy sayings such as, when I tried to make a feeble excuse for something I'd done wrong;
"You're full of wind and pee, like the barber's cat".
When I first tried my hand at singing, she told me amusedly, "If you were singing for shit, you wouldn't get the smell of it"
I always liked the various responses to the question, "what's for diner" when I was growing up in Liverpool - a particularfavourite was "Cow's cock and hairy bacon".
Or describing a short person, "He'd have to stand on tuppence to look over thruppence".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 10:14 AM

Thick as a kish of brogues here, though why a basket of shoes should be thick I don't know.

Skin the cat was always this when I was growing up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_s2fnYjso

though on a pole, not rings. My family swears I could do this before I could walk, but I was a *very* skinny baby.

Google tells me that the etymology of zoot suit is a joke formation of 'zoot' from 'suit' - presumably the same for 'reet' and 'right', ie exact, tidy.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Nov 15 - 01:22 AM

Cuter than a spotted pup.
Handier than a pocket on a shirt.
I ain't had so much fun since the hogs ate my baby brother.
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra.
Hotter than a fresh-(blanked) fox in a forest fire. Sometimes its a half-(blanked) fox...
That idea or plan is half-baked.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,silver
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 05:25 AM

An old and very dear American friend wrote in a letter recently that he is "getting lighter on his feet". Wonder what he meant? Losing weight? Or property? Or gaining strength? (He is recovering from surgery.)
In my native language, "light on one's feet" (usually said of a woman and not PC these days) means "of loose morals". I don't think it applies to this gentleman at all.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:12 AM

She's got legs like an all night chemist

He's all gravy and no meat.

After a pint he's ex army, after four he's ex SAS

Many of the much older men when I was an apprentice would delight in getting one of us to ask what sort of dog he had. "A wooden 'un wi' a tin prick!" Then they'd all fall about laughing.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,Gustave Kulenkamp
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 12:15 AM

Grinning like a goat eating quinces was my old granny Bini's favourite sayings

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 12:51 AM

Re "all gravy and no meat" cited just above -- there are lots of lovely variants of this formula. I have previously had published in Nigel Rees's "Quote-Unquote" bulletin one of my favourite of these --

"All hat and no cattle".

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Aug 16 - 09:22 PM

My grand mother would say this every time she pulled anything off over our heads like a tee-shirt or our pajamas . Tennessee

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Mr Red
Date: 08 Aug 16 - 03:54 AM

in my day, children who could not sit still were accused of having: ants in their pants

A girlfriend used to say (advising to ignore the insult (eg)): take a lot of 'no never'
she, on communal searching for an object: there it is! Gone. Inevitably we would be hoping (for a second) she had spotted it.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: clueless don
Date: 08 Aug 16 - 09:22 AM

"all gravy and no meat" reminds me of a friend who described his cat as "all fluff and no stuff".

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Aug 16 - 03:42 PM

'Light on his/her feet' here (Ireland) means more or less literally what it says: to be wiry and fast-moving.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,Pat
Date: 23 Jun 22 - 08:16 PM

I’m 57 and I just through out a skinny cat at my grandson as I pulled his shirt over his head. My daughter and my wife looked at me like I was nuts. My explanation of skin the cat was exactly as this thread started and the search led right to here. I’m not crazy and apparently neither was my mother.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Lighter
Date: 24 Jun 22 - 11:23 AM

"Ain't no way in West Hell." Louisiana.

In 1938 Floridian Zora Neale Hurston defined "West Hell" as the "hottest and toughest part of Hell."

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Joe_F
Date: 24 Jun 22 - 09:52 PM

A friend of mine once interpreted "fathead" as myelin-brain. I immediately translated that as "all insulation and no wire".

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 Jun 22 - 06:24 AM

"all insulation and no wire".

I made the connection




I'll get my electricians' screwdriver

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jun 22 - 01:02 AM

I once asked an elderly friend whom I met walking down the hall: Hi! How are you?
Trundling along with her walker, she responded: Well enough to sit up and take nourishment.

I and my brothers used to taunt each other: He thinks he's a wit- and he's half right.

I asked an elderly friend whom I had escorted to the bathroom: Did you have a BM? She said cheerfully, Nope. Just wind and water.

And one I expect to see one day is one that came out of my own mouth, leaving me and my listener awe struck: If he were dead, he'd be rolling in his grave. (Huh?)

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,Arwen Undómiel's lesser half
Date: 27 Jun 22 - 03:42 PM

Yeaternight durning a tender embrace I said

You sure put up with a lot for not very much

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Lighter
Date: 28 Jun 22 - 07:40 AM

I recall Ebbie's first two from my'50s childhood.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Ebbie
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 12:16 AM

Thanks, Lighter. I hadn't heard it before but it sounded like an old line.

Same with 'Just wind and water.' sounds like an old saying.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 03 Jul 22 - 08:30 PM

"Not enough room to swing a cat" refers to flogging withthe whip or "cat o'nine tails" onboard ship.

My uncle used to say a stupid person was "Numb-er than a hake!"

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Joe_F
Date: 03 Jul 22 - 08:57 PM

"You may be a pain, but I can't see thru you."
(said to someone who is blocking you view)

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jul 22 - 08:27 AM

Kids in the '50s: "Your mother wears combat boots!"

Evidently inspired by the "dozens."

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 04 Jul 22 - 08:55 AM

> "Your mother wears combat boots!"

Son of a gun .... ?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 08 Jul 22 - 12:23 PM

"You may be a pain, but I can't see thru you."
(said to someone who is blocking you view)

You make a better door than you do, a window.

DC

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Skin the Cat' and other family sayings
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 08 Jul 22 - 02:04 PM

> "all insulation and no wire"

A true story: Naughty persons in certain areas got into the habit of pulling cables out of the road (with the aid of a hefty car), in order to sell the copper for scrap; not only did this take out phones, but also on many occasions the TV and Internet feeds. Doing this seemed to stop after two occasions when the offenders found that they'd pulled out was fibre optic cable, which is expensive, but has no copper in it.

It's only just occurred to me that the quoted expression could apply both to said cable, and to said offenders' brains.