Posted on 09/21/2012 1:58:04 PM PDT by Pharmboy
I have always enjoyed hearing those funny and clever expressions handed down from grandmas and grandpas in the heartland. I grew up in the east, but went to school in the mid-west, and some of the guys I went to school with had some great ones.
I would love to hear some of yours.
I will start with a few that I heard years ago, and ask you folks to add your own favorites that you heard from friends and family.
My dad (NYC):
"Busier than a one-armed paper hanger."
From a buddy from Indiana:
"Well, he stands out like two turds in a pan of milk."
"She's crazier than a half-f***ed fox during the heat season."
From a guy from Georgia who lived down the hall [said about a woman who was not particularly attractive]:
She sure ain't nobody's pretty chile."
A woman from Maryland as she goes to answer the telelphone:
"What kind of fresh hell is this?"
Now you go...
My Grandmother would always say that someone the morning after..
Looked rode hard and put away wet. (S. Texas)
I said that to my young admin the other week and I think she choked, she was laughing so hard. lol
I like these expressions: “Dumber than a sack of hammers ...”
“A tough row to hoe ...” (an ordeal)
A person can look like “thirty miles of bad road ...”
Someone’s who’s tired looks like they “been rode hard and put away wet.”
But probably others came up with those first.
Maybe the useage of “rode hard and put up wet” varies by region, but here it’s not at all flattering. Here, it’s always been used in reference to very promiscuous women who aren’t very attractive, particularly older ones or those with bad habits such as substance abuse. You’d make a woman very unhappy with you by saying she looked that way.
My mom says.. Now you’re cooking with gas.
Also there’s:
There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Move like you’ve got a purpose! (I say this to my other admin... he ambles)
heh
I’ve used: If I were any happier, I’d be beside myself. (usually said sarcastically)
I was trying to find out directions to this place, and the guy looked at me and said “ You can’t get there from here, you have to start somewhere else.”
I must have looked at him in shock ‘cause he started laughing. I thought it was so funny that I remember it now, even say it to a few people when they ask me directions.
Thought of some more ...
My mom would say a curvy woman was “built like a brick hen coop.”
Someone who hates to spend money: “tighter than a tick” or “tighter than the bark on a tree.”
I don’t know where we heard this one — when the housework is done, “it’s shipshape in Bristol fashion.”
College friend’s dad said he was “feeling finer than frog hair, and that’s mighty fine.”
When my dad gives directions he often includes “pert near” and “yonder.”
Describing horses ...”bomb proof,” (very calm)”baby sitter” (ditto)or “dawdy horse” (suitable for Grandpa and Grandma to drive)”woman driver” (pretty calm)or the opposite would be a “boy’s horse” (very spirited) Some of that is picked up from the Amish and Old Order Mennonites.
The vet once said a neighbor’s too thin horse suffered from “lack of grocery itis.”
I like that one. Visual speech, man. Up there in North Dakota you might hear:
“Rained some.”
“That was a rain.”
“Gotta little.”
“Couple hundreths.”
Barely a spit or two.”
Though over in Idaho I heard a farm chemical salesman say, early one Friday when it was pouring down, just as had been hoped for, “We got us a whiskey rain.”
He meant that all the farmers (happily) would have to take the day off and would be in the tavern before noon.
A really light rain...
“It’s missin’”
Quoting, not directing this at you.
“That boy don’t have the sense that God gave a democrat.”
Heard it from my grandpa.
“They’re so poor they don’t have a pot to pee in nor a winda to throw it out of”
Didja hear about the snake that was so poor, he didn’t have a pit to hiss in?
Yep we used to hear “He’s been around since Hector was a pup.”
Hector I assume was the great hero from Homer’s Iliad.
Used to hear them use that name for any great big buck deer that had eluded hunters for several years too..when I was a kid the rancher whose place we hunted on went up on “Buck Ridge” (he got to go there the first day, and we got to go later) and he bagged Hector at dawn’s first light.
Came down and hung it in the old timber-framed shed he had and the roof caved in...holy crap we kids were in awe....
“So poor I can’t even pay attention.”
If fat geese were selling for ten cents apiece, I couldn’t afford to kiss a humming bird’s ass........
If we had some ham, we’d have ham and eggs if we had some eggs.
“Crooked-er than a dog’s hind leg.”
So crooked, he could stand behind a cork screw and not cast a shadow. (From my high school biology teacher)
“Drunker than Cooter Brown”
I heard that from my great grandma, whose maiden name was Brown. I assumed it was some relative of hers.
My grandma was full of ‘em. A couple that I remember:
“He’s so crooked he has to screw his socks on in the morning.”
The part of Kansas she grew up in was “Flatter’n a platter of piss.”
My Mother never used profanity of any kind. For that matter neither did my Father nor did their parents.
My Mother would just about not say anything bad about anyone and never anything bad about one of her children. One day she did get mad at some woman, for whatever reason I have forgotten. Mother trying to say something bad about her she said, that, that, that, Flapper!
That was the worst I have ever heard Mother call anyone.
f—d like a tied up goat
_________________________
Islamic?
Where did you hear that one Geron?
I had neve heard it.
‘Course in Dakota it was either rainin’ or not, no missin’ very often.
Out in Idaho we got the Seattle weather and it was missin’ and foggin’ and mossin’...but I never heard anybody use the term.
Very impressive...quantity AND quality. A hoot...thank yew!
My dad used it a lot, we get light rain here occasionally in Texas. My dad had a lot of them, some of them not fit to repeat. lol.
“An oughtter’s @$$ ain’t no bigger than a beaver’s”
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