Did your parents, grandparents, etc have any weird expressions?

[panader0]

My mom, born in 1908, used to say, when someone was coughing, "spit it up, it might be a gold watch."
She called women of questionable virtue "round heelers". She taught school in Weed, California when the teachers had to be single and walk on the sunny side of the street, so they weren't "shady ladies". She called an ex-girlfriend a "hoyden".
My dad (an air forcer) used to tell me "straighten up and fly right."
Or, "get out of left field and get in there and start pitching."

[ohiosmith]

1. Mother: want something to cry about? I'll give you something to cry about!

[panader0]

2. Jeannies dad when she was little: :Wake up and pee, the world's on fire."

Jeannie's dad was Elvis Presley's drill sgt.

[smokey nj]

21. My mother said the same thing.

[pipi_k]

27. Mine did too.

Also one of her favorites, "If you didn't do anything wrong, then why are you crying?"

As a kid I knew it wasn't exactly logical but didn't know why.

When I got older I knew...I'm crying because I'm being accused of something I didn't do!!!

[MiddleFingerMom]

53. I had ALWAYS done it.

[nolabear]

62. My father too. Frankly, it's just plain mean.

[nolabear]

3. My grandmother was wonderful that way.

First of all, she was a stoic. She was a salt of the earth woman but a good time was not her best thing. But every now and then she'd drop one in that dry style of hers that would leave me

My favorites:

(On seeingsomething in a very bright color, like a car or dress)

"Another nickle, she could have had a yellow one."

(Or on seeing an ugly hat)

"Might as well shit in it and throw it away."

My favorite from my father was "Sometimes I think, 'Well...', and then again I just don't know."

[Ptah]

4. My mother would often say, "Don't come running to me if you break your leg."

My dad would say, "Let's get a bucket for the blood."

[EFerrari]

14. "If you hurt yourself, I'll spank you."

lol

[Ptah]

16. "Go get the wooden spoon!"

[Art_from_Ark]

18. "Go fetch me a switch"

These words, uttered by playmates' parents, told me it was time to skeedaddle.

A switch was a green branch from broken off a tree or large woody vine that was about 2 feet long and a quarter-inch thick at the base. Looking back at it, those parents were pretty sadistic, and the infractions were pretty minor.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

47. In houston it was bamboo switches.

Yeah mom ran down the street with one screaming at me because I had "run off" meaning I went outside to find someone to play with.
Dad lumbered down the sidewalk.

I was like the little kid in the cartoon where the ass end is farther forward than the head, running, and the legs are just a circle.

[Art_from_Ark]

67. Bamboo switches-- yikes

It sounds like bamboo would be worse than the hickory switches that those Arkansas parents seemed to prefer.

At any rate, after seeing what those other kids had to deal with, I swore if I had any kids, I would never subject them to that kind of punishment.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

68. Every time I think about it, I feel like my brain is on fire in terror.

[geardaddy]

38. The wooden spoon at our house was called "The No-no"

[OriginalGeek]

5. For as long as I can remember whenever I had the hiccups

my grandma would say "Sing! It won't help your hiccups but it'll be funny for me."

[MiddleFingerMom]

54. BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!

[one_voice]

7. My granny used to say...

It's colder than a witches tit.

Be still you're like a green assed fly.

My dad would say..

Don't let your mouth write a check your ass can't cash

A hard head makes a soft ass

[cyberswede]

8. "gosh all fish hooks"

or "god...bless America" is what my mom would say instead of goddammit.

[turtlerescue1]

9. My all time favorite:

"They're lined up a--hole to belly button."

[bluesbassman]

10. Whenever I'd ask my dad if we could do this or that (usually involving cash expenditure)...

He'd say: "Whaddya mean we, you got a mouse in your pocket?"

[Art_from_Ark]

11. "Be thankful for your food! There are starving kids in Africa!"

This was at a time when news programs would regularly show scenes of malnourished children in Ethiopia or Biafra.

[EFerrari]

13. CARE ads, iirc. My uncle called me out for being skinny as a teen by calling me a CARE ad. lol

[pipi_k]

31. My mom's guilt country

of choice was China. It was always full of starving children who would have bitten off their right legs to have my buttered peas or hotdogs and beans with brown bread (pukeworthy to this day).

She wasn't amused when I said I would help her pack it up to send to them.

[southerncrone]

51. In my house it was "kids are starving in China".

[Art_from_Ark]

52. At my house, the national TV news would come on at dinnertime

In those days, the Biafran civil war was big news, as was a drought in Ethiopia, with grisly scenes of starving children, so it was only natural that my mother would say "Africa" instead of "China", I guess.

Even today, "Biafra" is synonymous with "starvation" to me.

[ashling]

77. For my mom it was India

She spent time there as a Red Cross Director in WWII

[Odin2005]

64. I got that one from my mom.

She was a teenager when the 70s famines in Africa were in the news, so she must have picked it up then.

[EFerrari]

12. Tons.

It took me well into my 20s to track down what was pretty much family code. Like "Finally, here's the comb" ("Ya aparecio el peine&quot turned out to be a reference to a time a pop singer left his comb at their house and after a while, my teenaged aunts and uncles just started using it and losing it and finding it again. I was always warned about El Viejo de los Caites carrying me away as a kid. He turns out to be "the old man wearing sandals". My grandma was a writer so there are a bunch of truncated literary refs that only she used but that we all understood like, "it glitters, doesn't it" was shorthand for "it glitters in its absence". It must have been hell on the incoming in-law wives and husbands.

[OriginalGeek]

15. Oh, my other grandma once told my brother

he didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

To be fair, he had found a vent pipe for her septic tank and was dropping oranges down in it.

[Archae]

17. I had a grandfather who said this one...

Before doing a job:

"Might as well, too windy to haul gravel."

Never could figure that one out.

But I like this one from Bill Cosby, his Dad used to say it to him:

"I brought you into this world, I'll take you out."

[davsand]

42. "Too windy to haul gravel" would be a VERY high wind!

What a nice mental image! That must have been a job he REALLY didn't want to do!



I've posted on here before about my Dad and how colorful he was with speech. I'll share a few more of his sayings here:


"Colder than a mother in law's kiss..."
"Dumber than an oyster..."
"As pretty as the north end of a southbound mule..."
"He's/she's a horse's rosette..."
"Ya gotta be smarter than the dog..."
"If brains were gunpowder he/she couldn't blow his/her nose..."



I have to stop now. This could go on for a long time!


Laura

[Generic Other]

19. Dad always had the right expression for any occasion

"Funny as a crutch..." (morbid sense of humor)

"Since Hector was a pup" (indicates age)

"Money don't grow on trees." (to chastise a spendthrift)

"No skin off my nose." (won't hurt me)

"He's a skinflint." (cheap)

"Don't chew your cabbage twice." (don't repeat yourself)

"A bindlestiff." (hobo)

"Ya liverlip baboon." (someone he was about to punch)

"My dancing days are done." (old age)

"Who's going to eat the pope's nose?" (chicken butt)

"Nutty as a fruitcake." (nuts)

"The slowboat to China." (a way to go that would take a long time)

[Bertha Venation]

35. Hi, G.O. What's "chicken butt?"

[erinlough]

37. We raised turkeys when I was young

This is the muscle in most birds that keeps the tail up. When you pluck them it does resemble a nose.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

45. I heard it called "The parson's nose".

[eppur_se_muova]

66. I've heard that as "funny as a rubber crutch" ...

i.e. cruelly unfunny.

[bif]

20. "Shit for the birds"

Is an expression my great aunt used. We could never figure that one out.

[fizzgig]

57. what context did she use it in?

we say 'that shit is for the birds.' the best way to define it is as a phrase to refer to a situation that is aggravating, irritating, bullshit, absurd or something that you do not want to do or deal with.

ie: i do not want to go to the coffee shop on hipster night, that shit is for the birds.

i don't know how people deal with x, that shit is for the birds.

[Avalux]

72. My grandmother would say that!

If she thought something was absurd or not true, she'd say it was "shit for the birds". Does that sound about right?

[smokey nj]

22. "When my ship comes in" was my mother's standard response whenever I asked her if she

would buy me a toy. Her ship never came in, though.

[Rambis]

23. Can someone explain "can of corn"

I have heard it used but have no idea what it means?

[grandtrio]

28. This one is a "can of corn" to answer

a baseball that drops straight down into the glove of a waiting player (for an out). (Since the 1940s.) : It's a can of corn! Right into Sammy's mitt.

something that is really easy [to do], as in easy as catching a can of corn. (From the image of an old-time grocery store clerk who would grasp a can from the top shelf with the special long tool, and then drop it straight down into his hand or outstretched apron.) : Nothing to it. A can of corn.

[Rambis]

30. Ahhh "piece of piss"

thanks

[crunch60]

56. If someone was poor,

Mom would say, "They don't have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out"

[OriginalGeek]

41. When I used to play baseball/softball

we used can of corn to mean an easy play. Coulda' been offense or defense but the implication was don't screw up an easy play "Come onnnn, that was a can of corn!"


I have no idea why though.

edit~ - o now I see...lol

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

24. My mother has some phrases

The one I particularly recall is "Truth is truth, even in Budapest" (my mother is Austrian).

[livetohike]

25. All of my Grandparents were Slovak, so the translation to English isn't quite the same but,

my Grandfather would always say, "Eat. Don't starve yourself like you do at home!". That one always makes me laugh when I think of it and he has been gone since 1979.

[Iggo]

26. Grandma was from Ireland...

...and between her and my mom, for the first five years of my life I thought Jesus's last name was Murphy.

[Bertha Venation]

34. hahahahahahaha

[femmocrat]

29. My grandma was a real character.

Some that I remember:

"Here's your hat, what's your hurry?"

"If you don't work, you don't eat."

and a racist one, that I can't put here.

She always left out a syllable at the end, so instead of "dangerous", something would be "danger", or instead of "beautiful", something would be "beauty".

She died in 1965. And she cheated at gin rummy!

[pipi_k]

32. For a fairly prudish guy...

my father had some somewhat earthy sayings...

"uglier than a barrel full of snots"

"I'm drier than a fart" (when he wanted a beer)

"You don't know shit from shine-ola"

[Bertha Venation]

33. Mom: your ass is grass and I'm the lawn mower

[frogmarch]

36. Mrs. Astor’s pet horse

was how my step-mom referred to people who were overly dressed up, or to my older sister and me when we asked to buy clothing that was too expensive for our family’s pocketbook: “Who do you think you are, Mrs. Astor’s pet horse?”

Another expression Mom used was “skinny as a rump strap.” I was very thin as a kid, and she wanted me to eat more.

If my sister and I wanted bedtime snacks, she’d caution us with “Don’t overdo it, or you’ll see your great-grandmother.” She meant we’d have nightmares.

[geardaddy]

39. My mom used to say this...

If asked her to get us something while we were sitting around, she'd say "Are your legs painted on?" I know she got that from her mother, because *she'd* say it to us when we visited her.

[NewJeffCT]

40. For my grandfather, anybody that wasn't white

was one of them "colored folks"

He wasn't Archie Bunker, but I'm sure he could identify a bit with him since he was a hard working blue collar guy his whole life. He was born in 1910, so the Great Depression hit when he was 19. After his honeymoon, I think he took one other vacation his entire adult life. And, even when he retired at 65, he continued to work 2 part time jobs until he was in his early 80s.

He passed away in 1995 - so, the fact that my first wife was of Jewish descent and my second wife is Chinese never gave him a heart attack.

[Wait Wut]

43. My dad...

... "You're talking like a sausage."

WTF?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

44. A few:

According to my grandpa, something that smelled bad would "stink a dog off a gut wagon."

And if someone was really stupid, they "couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the heel."

Something very hot was "hotter than the mill-tails of hell."

My mom used to say someone who was very thin "has to stand twice to cast a shadow."

If we asked for some kind of food other than what she put on the table, she'd always say, "What do you think this is, a short order restaurant?"

If there was some sort of mess or commotion or damage she'd want to know, "What's this forstuelse?" which is Norwegian for something like twist or sprain.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

46. Mom's east texas expressions.

Or maybe Mississippi. her parents moved from MS to TX about 1920.

"Not worth the powder (or dynamite) it would take to blow him to hell."

"Not worth shooting"

"Couldn't find his ass with both hands and a Ouija board"
Love the woo-woo factor!

dad's terms, he was from Ohio:
Marble orchard = graveyard

"Many a mickle makes a muckle" -- No idea what that means.

"They got euchred" Euchre is a card game but I guess it means they got cheated.

When I said I wanted something he said "The people in hell want ice water".

when he was a kid they nagged him to eat because of "starving Armenians". That was in the 1920s.

[fizzgig]

58. getting euchred isn't getting cheated

it's losing the hand you made the bid on. maybe he meant losing when they thought they'd win.

i heard the people in hell want ice water plenty of times as a kid, but not necessarily directed at me.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

61. Thanks!

[kurtzapril4]

48. My parents were hillbillies

And so am I, LOL. But I've assimilated to yankee ways. Anyway, they were both born on farms so they had lots of sayings.

You're as useless as teats on a boar.
That's fine as frog's hair.
That's scarcer than hen's teeth.
It's colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra.
That's slicker than snot on a doorknob.
If you step on them ants it's gonna rain.
When leaves show their backsides it's gonna rain within a day.
Come here, let me teach you how to milk a mouse(the equivalent of pull my finger)


So many more!

[justgamma]

49. When she was tired, instead of a sigh,

Mom would say, "Mother, mother, mother pin a rose on me." Years ago I picked it up, but shortened it to just "Mother". Needless to say that has a whole new meaning now and people think I'm swearing at them when they hear me.

[annabanana]

73. sounds like part of a ditty Mom used to sing:

Mother, Mother, Mother, pin a rose on me
I've got two boys stuck on me.
One is blind and the other can't See-e-e-e

Mother, Mother, Mother, pin a rose on me.

[hunter]

50. "Out in the tules..."

That's where later immigrant dairy farmers settled in California because the more accessible land along the coast had been taken.

The expression "out in the tules," referring to the sedge growing 3–10 ft tall that lined the lakeshore, is still common in the dialect of old Californian families and means "beyond far away."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake

This may or may not be a true story. In old white California sorting the truth from the hype and bullshit is never easy. This tradition lives on in Hollywood.

My dad's mom was "old California." Her family had dairy farms on the coast. Fortunately for me the land and money are long gone. With that kind of money I might have grown up to be a "Native" California Republican Asshole. But my great grandfather was a dreamer and the family's wealth was over-leveraged in 1929. But it's sort of fun to see my family names on rural road signs.

Some of my wife's family has been here longer by maybe 10,000 years. Now that's "old Californian." My generation was the first in my white family to marry outside the "white race." Some of the older relatives (now gone...) were not happy about it. My grandfather called my wife a "Mexican girl" and apparently it was okay to casually date "Mexican girls", but marrying them was scandalous.

[vanlassie]

55. "what have you got besides a habit?"

If someone would bum a cigarette and then need a match.

[Throckmorton]

59. Pray for fog in Worchester

My grandfather was a New Haven Railroad engineer.

[ldf]

60. mom would describe the REALLY rich as

"richern' four foot up a bull"

pretty graphic, but funny.

[applegrove]

63. My grandmother called the kneading cats do "making butter". My other grandmother used to

say 'fud' instead of 'food' when I was a tot. I was working in Nova Scotia when I heard somebody else say it that way and I was thrilled. I wanted to hop over the counter and kiss her. Turns out her family was from New Glasgow too.

[GoCubsGo]

65. Instead of saying "Well, I'll be damned."...

...my dad says, "Well, I'll be dipped in shit!" It is now being used by the next generation, as well.

[DirkGently]

69. "So? Sew buttons on ice cream!"

Interesting imagery, I always thought.

[annabanana]

70. "That's just the kind of Hair Pin I am"

I have no goddam idea where it came from.

[annabanana]

71. also: "By the Borey-eyed Johnson". (I expect it's of Swedish origin) . . . n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

74. My Nana taught me to "swear" when I was 3. Whenever I was upset I was to say,

"Oh, piffle-phooey!"

Whenever we went out to dinner and were served drinks, my mother would always say, "Don't drink it all gone before your food comes." My bro and I would laugh at her for adding the unnecessary "gone." LOL

The family also passed down kid-words. "Fie-yous" were flowers. "Dipsappered" is self-explanatory. I used the words look-a-me and uppy-downies, but they didn't get added to the lexicon. LOL I got burned in science class one year by one of those family words as I put it in a description of a slide I had been viewing. I had no idea it wasn't a real word and couldn't understand why the teacher circled it in red and put 3 question marks alongside it. LOL

[pink-o]

75. Both my parents (born in 1924) said "For corn's sake"

Instead of Pete or God. Dad was brought up in Baltimore, Mom in Vancouver, BC...neither exactly hicks! And neither could tell me where it came from.

Dad is 88 now and mentally sharper than most folks my age. He still calls a dive-y bar or restaurant a "joint". As a boomer, I keep telling him that has a different meaning, but in the 21st century as long as he doesn't call it a blunt I guess that's okay!

How many of my hard-earned expressions I thought were so cool are gonna end up on a future version of this thread in whatever platform 25 years from now...?

[Honeycombe8]

76. "I was raised in the sticks," then he'd point somewhere. "Act like a monkey!" meaning

meaning to show some personality for the camera. Unfortunately, those projections show a group of kids literally acting like monkeys. Lovely.

[dothemath]

78. Expressions

My dad used to say "Great gobs of mud" and old things had been around "since Hector was a pup". Anyone know where those came from? My dad was German.