BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 04:18 PM

We've reached 100. go here for more.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 03:30 PM

Smartest kid in the ungraded class - a Dadism.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: paddymac
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 03:25 PM

In re "spill your guts" meaning to talk or tell all. In earlier times, a favored form of torture in some areas was to cut open the abdominal wall and literally "spill the guts" of the victim. I would imagine many folks would willingly tell all if they thought so doing would avoid the "procedure". That's one possible origin. It might also be a metaphor based on simple regurgitation (i.e.; barfing, etc.) Yuch! Just the thought of it is enough to send a fellow running after a pint.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:46 AM

I'ts FREE sheets to the wind. If the sheets are free (loose), the sail will luff and the boat goes nowhere. It's not easy to say "free sheets" when you have spliced the mainbrace (got drunk). == Johnny

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST,Al
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:35 AM

About 20 years ago our Union president accused management (in writing) of such incompetence that they could "f*** up a one-man parade."

We workers all got a kick out of that, but haven't had a decent contract since!

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Naemanson
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:33 AM

Where on Earth did the expression "spill your guts" come from. It is used as a euphemism for "tell your story" but it seems pretty grisly.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:57 AM

In my youth those aquatic speed contests were "midnight submarine races". A small distinction, of course.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Barbara
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:57 AM

Going down to the river "to watch the submarine races" was also called "getting mud for my turtle" where I went to college, and were both euphemisms for going to the woods/river to make out.
My dad says "hang a Ralph" and "hang a Louie", military?
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST,Gochamp
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:57 AM

Two Australian expressions: The first "shit and corruption", I heard from a friend in college. I have used it as an expletive ever since. The only other place I have ever seen or heard it is Tim Winton's novel "Cloudstreet". The other "ugly as a hat(or bag)full of arseholes

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: WyoWoman
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:47 AM

Timbrel -- I think that "If you ain't John, I'm gone ..." line came from a story by a comedian named Brother Dave Mason. My sister's boyfriend had a couple of his albums and I remember hearing that story on it. (They were old records when I heard them in the late 1960s, so he might have been a comedian in the 1950s or early 1960s.) My mother heard one of the songs "Yea, yea, nuts, hot nuts, you get 'em at the peanut stand ... " and told my sister she didn't appreciate having that trash played in our home, thank you very much.

I couldn't imagine why she got so upset about a song about peanuts ...

I think one of the best expressions comes to us courtesy of the esteemed governor of the great state of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, who tells foes he's gonna open a can of Whup-Ass on them.

Indeedy.

ww

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Harold W
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:26 AM

Has anybody heard the expression, "...blacker than Cody's goat?" And who is this Cody and why he has a black gost?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Kim C
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 05:18 PM

So in some circles, s**t is worth quite a lot!

Sam Hill is supposedly a euphemism for the Devil.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 05:12 PM

In the old times in Europe (and maybe even today in some areas) you could tell who was the richest farmer around: He had the biggest pile of manure! Not only an indirect reflection of how many animals he had but a wonderful resource for spreading on the fields.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Naemanson
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 04:10 PM

Actually, come to think of it sh*t isn't worth much but Composted Natural Farm Products for the garden fetches a very pretty penny. Also the San Diego Zoo was selling Zoo Poo for the garden. And that stuff was expensive!

And if you think I'm kidding you should see how much money my father got for the pile behind the old dairy barn.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: mousethief
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:37 PM

Who the sam hill is Sam Hill?

I suppose not being worth a sh*t means not being worth very darned much because a sh*t isn't worth very darned much -- at least I wouldn't pay much for it, although I might pay to DO it if the urge was great enough. But I digress.

Is "what in the blazes" a euphemism for what in the Hell? What about "what in the blue blazes"? Is that just another "bl" word added for alliteration, or does the "blue" have any significance?

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Bert
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:36 PM

I always thought that the brass monkey expression was a reference to the brass statuettes of the three wise monkeys.

Here's a new computer age expression meaning everything - 'From bang to tilda'

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Kim C
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:32 PM

I've always wondered about "drunker than Cooter Brown." Who the sam hill is Cooter Brown?

Also, when we say that something isn't worth a s**t - just how much is a s**t actually worth?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 02:16 PM

GUEST,Gord (and others): I've heard that theory before - about the original meaning of "brass monkey" - and I am highly skeptical. It seems to me that if the cannon balls were so delicately balanced that a change in temperature would cause them to spill, what would happen in a high sea? Also, if such a thing as a brass monkey with those characteristics ever existed, it couldn't have existed very long, because it wouldn't take very long to think of a better design. Sounds like "folk etymology" to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Margaret V
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 08:07 AM

Instead of saying "six of one, half-dozen of another," a colleague's husband says "happy to glad." She and I often have to edit documents together and when we're demuring over word choice we usually just end up saying "happy to glad" and stick with the original word. Margaret

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Robby
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 08:01 AM

Things I learned at my father's knee, and other joints:

He sure talks a good fight for--someone who can't be relied on
He couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag for--someone who was weak or ineffective
Hang a right or Hang a left for--directions for making right or left turns while driving
It's six of one and half-dozen of the other for--choices having equal value (good or bad)

But here is something I have never figured out. Why do people when taking a dring of liquor sometimes say: "Here's mud in your eye." Obviously the drink is going down the throat (I hope) and it certainly isn't mud (hope again). So where does it come from and what does it mean?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST,Gord
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 12:20 AM

Way back there, someone mentioned 'cold enough to freeze the balls of the brass monkey'. A brass monkey was a brass square upon which steel cannon balls were piled in pyramid fashion. Brass has a higher co-efficient of linear expansion than steel, which simply means that it will expand or contract faster than steel as the temperature changes. If the temperature were low enough the brass would contract to the point where the balls no longer had anything to support them.

One of my fathers favourite expessions to describe something broken 'it's come from together'.

Here's one that I've never figured out: to describe someone drunk as 'three sheets to the wind'. I've heard it as 'fore-sheets to the wind' sheets being the lines that control a ships sails. If the fore-sheets (those that control the foresails) are blowing in the wind the ship would stagger along. Any comments.

Gord

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST,Gord
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 12:14 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 10:18 PM

"I've gone through all that, from ip to izzard."

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Naemanson
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 10:00 PM

Squat, in nautical terms, is the action of the boat's stern settling deeper into the water at higher speeds. Thus you could indeed run aground in thin water at high speeds. Sailboats heel, powerboats squat. Even the words for powerboats are ugly.

The term squat as in "you don't know squat" I'm sure has been around longer than speedboats. I believe the reference to defecation was "right on the money".

There was also a discussion up above about petting and necking. Are any of you familiar with those words and the phrase "going to watch the submarine races"?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 07:49 PM

What's the 'whole shebang'?

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 05:17 PM

I wonder if "squat" refers to the fact that a ship will sink a little deeper into the water when moving from salt water to fresh water?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST,Ian
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 05:16 PM

You're a bit short of dialect ones. How about: "sheenin' like skitter on a ley rig" (translation supplied on request)

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: mousethief
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 04:59 PM

goofing off, or working on something with no hope of accomplishing anything, is fiddle-farting (around).

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: paddymac
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 04:54 PM

I have always considered the use of the word "squat" to be a reference to the natural defecation posture and , indirectly, the products thereof.

The notion of seaman (or anybody else) calculating the compression of water under the hull is odd, especially as water is essentially incompressible - a fundamental principle of hydraulics.

Density, as distinct from compressibility, is another matter. Sea water reaches its maximum density at about 4 degrees C. Density variations in sea water, due to differences in temperature and salinity, are a major factor in deep-ocean circulation patterns.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Bert
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 12:31 PM

Patrish, I've not heard that one for years.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Mbo
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 12:08 PM

Our of our classic Italian insult's "You're beautiful like the backside of a frying pan."

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Patrish(inactive)
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 12:00 PM

Hows yer belly off for spots
I used to hear this alot when I lived in Northumberland. I think it means "How are you doing"
Patrish

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Kim C
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 11:17 AM

My mom says, "Well, I swan....."

Personally, I like sam hill, as in "What in the sam hill you yellin' for, George?"

I think that "if you ain't John" thing is from a funny haunted house story. I wish I could remember it.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: MsMoon
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 10:54 AM

My Alabama-native friend says of the ill-favored: "Looks like he got beat on the head with the Ugly Stick" Or, in extreme cases, "The Ugly Tree fell on him!"

One thing that has confused me all my life is telling the difference between catch-phrases used in my own family and those used by the broader public. When my Dad came home from work with his pay envelope when I was young, he would hand my Mom her money, saying "Here's your share of the pig!" I thought this was a universal expression until I went to work in a restaurant when I was 16. I lined up asking for "my share of the pig" and got blank stares from everyone. Turns out my parents just picked up on it -- it's a phrase from the old Michael Palin movie, "A Private Function."

Another in that category: To ask if someone would be at home when you returned from a trip to the store or wherever, you said "Will you be here when John gets here?" (From an old joke - the punch line is, "If you ain't John, I'm gone." I've never heard the joke).

Other Dad expressions..."On the other hand...you have five fingers."

"You've got a point...but if you comb your hair right, you can cover it up."

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 03:14 AM

for ugly ... that face would make a freight train take a dirt road

for a scrawny moustache ... a Fu Manchu

== Johnny

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 11:07 PM

Some of my father's old ones: something worthless = not worth the full of your arse of roasted snow;
missing something by a mile = not within a beagle's gowl of it;
someone ugly = a face on him like a plateful of mortal sins;
someone skinny = there's more beef on a butcher's apron;
something that upsets him = what takes me to the fair;
someone not well-coordinated = he's as awkward as pig goin' to hoke;
someone mean and dishonest = he'd steal the eye out of your head and come back and piss in the hole;
All the best
Seamus

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 11:05 PM

yep, Harold...my mother used that one, but I never spelled it in my head, and so never saw that connotation..it was just a curious word to me.Not sure if it ever DID have the 'pee' part emphasized--my mom sure wouldn't have used it that way!

tonight, Ferrara reminded me of one of HER mother's sayings..."Ugly as homemade sin"....and I suppose that's pretty ugly..(to coin a phrase)..{and there's one...'coining a phrase'}

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Harold W
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 09:37 PM

Has anybody heard the expression, "Pee wadding?" My mother used to use this in a sense, "That is enough to scare the pee wadding out of you." I was a teenager before I thought about what it meant.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Helen
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 06:41 PM

Yes, Margaret, "chucking a mental" is still a common saying.

mousethief/Alex - your "uglier" quote makes more sense than the industrial age equivalent: Like the backend of a bus. I'm not sure if it usually refers to ugliness or obesity.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 05:21 PM

"For 'tis the sport to have the enginer / Hoist with his owne petar" -- Shakespeare, Hamlet III iv.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 05:18 PM

Catercorner, cattycorner, and as I knew it when I grew up in Minnesota, kittycorner, remind me of a great favorite of mine: slantindicular!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 05:10 PM

JeffP referred to the meaning of "petard" as a bomb. It also has the meaning of what I'll rather delicately refer to as an abrupt release of intestinal gas. With that in mind, what's the picture you get from "He was hoist on his own petard"?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Barbara
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 03:19 PM

I have a friend who makes up her own colloquialisms.
Ones I can think of just off hand include "Dead Food Store" for those Canned Food outlets and others that sell remaindered food, "Peezit" for a highway rest stop, (like whoozit and whatzit), and "Boogieamos" for 'Let's go" (a hybrid of "Vamanos" and "Let's boogie"). I also learned the word 'squick' from her -- she tells me it came from the internet, and is a cross between squeamish and icky -- someone is said to be squick about something they wish to avoid.
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Robby
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 02:26 PM

Well, petting has been around since before WW II and maybe even longer. As in "The girl he met just loves to pet, and it fits you to a tee" from Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree (with anyone else but me), which, I understand, is from the Big Band era.

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 02:02 PM

Caleb, squat, I believe, is a term for the compression of water caused by the weight of a ship and if you don't know how to calculate for it, you are liable to run aground.

Naemanson, according to my little book, - in Chinook jargon "stick" meant anything of wood, from a ship's mast to a forest. Gradually it came to mean the bush country of the interior of B.C. To be called "from the sticks" was an insult. Coastal natives once designated their interior neighbours as "Stick Indians". I wonder if that is where the name for the Stikine River came from?

From another thread, it struck me odd that we use the terms "necking" and "petting". Strange descriptions..........I can understand "necking" as anything above that part of the anatomy, but "petting"?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 01:29 PM

Some of my musician friends somehow got started using this expression for something they hate: Instead of just saying "It sucks", they say, "It sucks dead turtle d**k for six city blocks."

They also have some pet names for some of the standard tunes in their repertoire: "Si Bheag, Si Mhor" is called "She Begs for More", "The White Cockade" is called "White Viagra". Anybody have any more of these?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: jeffp
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 01:22 PM

A petard was a bomb that would be placed under a castle's walls. Fuses in those days were somewhat less than reliable, so that on occasion one would go off prematurely and the sapper would be "hoist on his own petard."

jeffp, who really needs to get out more

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Penny S.
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 01:10 PM

I'd heard the same as Micca about petering out. Any relation to hoist with his own petard?

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Penny S.
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 01:08 PM

kittycorner sounds like caterways, if it means going diagonally.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Curious Expressions, Second Helping
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 11:59 AM

Could'nt organise a piss up in a brewery, if you gave him the key and a week to plan it.. Aye