Friday OT - In Your Wheelhouse

[Angie]

Thanks to @Mr Janny for this idea. What is a favorite or particularly entertaining idiom of yours? Any stories about misunderstandings related to them? I work with a lot of people for whom English is not their first language, and they have mentioned that this is the hardest hurdle of translation.

For example, here are a few that have some weird mental images:

- Chew the fat
- Put a sock in it
- **** or get off the pot

 

[Angie]

“You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an [item of abundance] in here.”

 

[Cyclones_R_GR8]

“You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an [item of abundance] in here.”

I use this a lot

 

[Angie]

I use this a lot

I actually do, too - and usually in regards to avocado toast.

 

[pourcyne]

My mom used a large variety of expressions which seem to have more or less disappeared from more modern English.

• (to have) more guts than a Christmas goose = to be presumptuous
• higher than a cat's back = expensive
• everybody and his dog = a lot of people
• You and I are going to have words. = You're in trouble.

If it's any consolation to your non-native speakers, every language has idiomatic expressions. Keeps out the riff-raff (as my mom used to say).

 

[JP4CY]

"Give me a ballpark"

I say that quite a bit with cost estimations.

 

[cycloneG]

I use "Like a bull in a china shop" a lot. Most often it has to do with one of our cats that is large and energetic. He just plows through anything in his way.

 

[RLD4ISU]

"Eat the ugly frog first"

 

[Al_4_State]

“Crazier than a sh**thouse rat”

“Sweating like a wh*re in church”

“Creamed” as a synonym for drunk

“More stubborn than ditch snow”

“Hornier than a 2-peckered Billy goat”

“Raining like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock”

 

[Trice]

Someone once described a situation that was a bit of a clusterf**k as being "like a monkey f**king a football" and I think about that quite frequently.

 

[matclone]

Beat the band (re: speed of travel).
Fish or cut bait (I know this was already mentioned).

 

[Fishhead]

Rinse and repeat

 

[ISUCyclones2015]

“9 women can’t make a baby in a month” when asked if we can add more people to a job to make it faster.

Though I’ve been trying to come up with a different gender neutral one for years to no real avail.

 

[1UNI2ISU]

'(Event far in the past) hasn't happened since Jesus Christ was lecturing in Omaha'

 

[matclone]

He doesn't have a pot to piss in.
Too old to cut the mustard.

 

[cyfanatic13]

Got this from a college buddy but I love to use common phrases such as "as the crow flies" in situations that it absolutely doesn't apply and see if the other person catches on.

 

[Clone1992]

So hungry that I "could eat the ass end out of a rhino" or a "baby's butt through a park bench". I can't even take credit for those as I picked them up from movies or somewhere else that I don't remember.

 

[cyclones500]

"Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

I'm surprised at how often I've had to explain that one through the years, apparently it's unfamiliar to more people than I would've guessed.

 

[CYdTracked]

The 2 lines people use at work that drive me nuts are some versions of
"Let's table this for later"
"Let's take this conversation offline"

I know I use some lines at home that I get blank stares from my kids when I used them because they are figure of speech but can't think of 1 off the top of my head right now.

One line I like to use once in awhile when a funny opportunity presents itself is from Major League 2
"Women, you can't live with them and they can't pee standing up"

I have a coworker that uses some strange lines from time to time that we like to bring back up to rib him a little. My favorite is
"This coffee is orgasmic"
That 1 line has led to us using "orgasmic" randomly to describe things when we are just messing around in the office.

 

[Bipolarcy]

Thanks to @Mr Janny for this idea. What is a favorite or particularly entertaining idiom of yours? Any stories about misunderstandings related to them? I work with a lot of people for whom English is not their first language, and they have mentioned that this is the hardest hurdle of translation.

For example, here are a few that have some weird mental images:

- Chew the fat
- Put a sock in it
- **** or get off the pot

I use all kinds of these things and there was a kid at work who had never heard of most of them. One day I told him he was straining gnats and swallowing camels, an idiom for sweating the small stuff when there were bigger issues. He accused me of making it up on the spot and wouldn't believe me that it was a well-known saying. There were a lot of instances like that, where I would pull out an idiom, dust it off and use it. He was just SURE I was making all these up. I told him to google it. Only then would he believe me. Stupid kid.