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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3403 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Mon, 03 November 2008 09:04   |
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 L.R.K.
Messages: 1080
Registered: October 2008
Location: Sweden |
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Slowly the Cabbages! In a slightly nasty see-if-I-care-what-you-think sort of tone? That's lovely! (Of course I am terribly curious about where it might come from and trying to come up with some sort of theory, but of course failing...  )
Well, since so many mentioned they liked it - yay! - I'm so glad, because I really do, and it's fun with words and sayings that have a flavour to them!
Swedish "kråkslott" literally "crow castle" means derelict castle...
[Updated on: Mon, 03 November 2008 09:05]
Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.
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| Re: Comfort Food [message #3423 is a reply to message #3395 ] |
Mon, 03 November 2008 11:26 |
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Susan from Athens
Messages: 817
Registered: October 2008
Location: Athens, Greece |
Senior Member |
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| southdowner wrote on Mon, 03 November 2008 15:29 |
Greece is becoming synonymous with cuisine* since I met you - all of it mouthwatering I'm actually having greek salad with feta cheese for lunch.
(*but that's a french word - what's your equivalent, Susan?)
maybe Jodi could give us a north american ferret phrase, b_twin_1 could share sheep sayings from Australia and I'll offer dog quotes from England...
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So glad to have a Hellenicising influence on you! I haven't forgotten the spinach rice. Just found that I didn't have our recipe down and I need to ask my mother who is coming home tonight. ( I could quote you have a dozen, but hey, you want the family one ).
We do use cuzina (from the French or the Italian) which means kitchen but also cooking in general, but talking about all those indulgences is truly an epicurean delight, and that is of course from Epikouros and his school of philosophy. Or magheiriki (cooking) and zaharoplastiki (confectionery / baking literally means sugar sculpting ) I love word origins and have great fun with my etymology.
[Updated on: Mon, 03 November 2008 11:54]
“I have always imagined heaven to be a kind of library.” –Jorge Luis Borges
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3553 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Tue, 04 November 2008 04:02 |
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Are there local variations for being "sent to Coventry"? And why poor Coventry? I use this phrase a lot; it's so much more interesting than "ignoring".
Someone says "pie" and we all go on alert, like meercats. "Pie? Where?" - Blackbear
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3613 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Tue, 04 November 2008 17:13 |
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Here is Utah ignorant means rude. But there's an accent--How ignernt! I still wonder how the to words got locked together. They also say, for pretty when something is pretty. For pretty!
"And by the way you look fantastic in your boots of Chinese plastic."
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3619 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Tue, 04 November 2008 18:24 |
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afuzzybird
Messages: 38
Registered: October 2008
Location: Madison, WI |
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In Wisconsin, we call the drinking fountain the "bubbler". It also enjoys some use in northern Illinois and Upper Michigan.
I learned recently that this is because the first drinking fountain made by Kohler, which is based in Wisconsin, was called the Bubbler.
[Updated on: Tue, 04 November 2008 18:31]
"He envisioned a world where bears could tell jokes, chickens could sing, pigs could be stars and they all could ride bicycles." -- Frank Oz about Jim Henson
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3668 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 04:43 |
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Susan from Athens
Messages: 817
Registered: October 2008
Location: Athens, Greece |
Senior Member |
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OK, one of the most amusing and animal crazed people appropriate Greek sayings is:
kai PRAsin' Aloga
Which means and other foolish things, but literally stands for GREEN HORSES. (Prasino is green and alogo is horse, aloga-horses) So don't talk to me about circling London in the bus and Green Horses, southdowner: You know you'll get there just fine!
The origin is funny because it actually comes directly from the ancient Greek where it is
Prassein Aloga
Prassein is an alternative form to prattein, the infinitive to act. Aloga is the adverbial form for without reason (a- the suffix for not or without, logos meaning word, language, reason and much more).
The two phrases sound the same, because horses are without language (literally dumb beasts), although in antiquity they were called (h)ippoi (from whence hippodrome). With time the words slipped but the meaning stayed the same. So bring on the Green horses!
“I have always imagined heaven to be a kind of library.” –Jorge Luis Borges
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3686 is a reply to message #3685 ] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 10:32 |
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I don't think it does in all of the South - I hear it used here(Texas) in the positive sense. Though I guess what I hear more often is "God love 'em". Though that can be used in the sense of "Those two idiots! It's a good thing God loves them..." in addition to more generally something akin to "bless his heart"...
"The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3690 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 11:30 |
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Whereas I've rarely heard either phrase, with their meaning, used here. Either in Oregon, or SoCal.
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3716 is a reply to message #3685 ] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 18:01 |
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Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
Senior Member
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| Laura wrote on Wed, 05 November 2008 07:53 |
Here's one that I think is funny; in the midwestern United States, the phrase "Bless his/her heart," means just that. It might have some connotations of the person being silly or ineffectual but they mean well. However, I used that phrase in front of a woman who had gone to school in Georgia, and soon found out that in the southern US, "Bless his/her heart," means the opposite, that you really don't care for that person at all and they can go to Hades!
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God, this is hilarious--I was just getting ready to bring this one up. It's understood around here (central midwest) that any time you say "Bless his heart," about someone, the unspoken follow up is, "--that poor stupid son of a b**ch." Usually it connotes you think they're dumb, not necessarily that you dislike them.
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3722 is a reply to message #3716 ] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 18:38 |
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My boss uses an even shorter version, where she will say "Bless him" (usaually him for some reason)
The extended version is something like:
"bless the poor fellow as he has absolutely no clue at all" or similar.
The one I find most confusing from Americans is the could/couldnt care less
As far as I can figure out - the English version is
I couldn't care less about x
The American version means the same but they say
I could care less about x
It took a while before I got my head around that.
Having been on the net for about 10 years now, I discovered the hard way in early years about using colloquial lingo, and have weaned a lot of it (I think) out of my online conversations. It just makes it too complicated and causes issues with comprehension.
And we have a lot of funny (peculiar) sayings in Kiwi speak
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3749 is a reply to message #3686 ] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 21:46 |
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Yeah, in our part of Texas I often hear 'bless his/her heart' as kind 'aw, he's an idiot, but he's our idiot' sort of thing--but it's also often a genuine expression of sympathy, especially if you're speaking directly to someone and say "Oh, bless your heart!"
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3771 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Thu, 06 November 2008 00:37 |
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We have "bless her heart" up her in Utah--it usually is meant is pity.
Another thing I've heard up here is "sixes." Derived from "6 of one, half a dozen of the other." So if the choice, decision, whatever, is the same, it's "sixes."
Example: I wasn't sure whether to go out with Dave or Tom, but it's sixes, so it didn't really matter."
"And by the way you look fantastic in your boots of Chinese plastic."
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3817 is a reply to message #3804 ] |
Thu, 06 November 2008 11:28 |
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I haven't seen "awkward turtle" done in forever! Among my group of friend it wasn't something you said, it was just a hand motion, occasionally accompanied by saying "awkward!". The more awkward a situation was could be illustrated by moving the hands further apart(the right hand moving left, the left hand moving right so they were still crossed), sometimes requiring more than one person to complete the turtle.
I figured "could care less" came from people not paying attention to what they were saying... Probably heard someone use it sarcastically and then thought that was how the phrase was said.
"The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3841 is a reply to message #3832 ] |
Thu, 06 November 2008 16:02 |
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I didn't know that! Interesting...
"The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3853 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Thu, 06 November 2008 19:46 |
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So a khaki awkward turtle would be...?
"And by the way you look fantastic in your boots of Chinese plastic."
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3865 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Thu, 06 November 2008 20:13 |
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This isn't local, because I've never heard anyone but my mom say it and she got it from an MK college roommate, but the family phrase for "calm down and get a grip" is "don't have baby kittens!"
The awkward turtle was either started or brought to our school by one guy (a friend of an acquaintance's roommate or something like that--it was a small school) and spread in an insane, infectious disease kind of way through the freshman girls' dorm, and from there to the rest of the local colleges. We'd all been doing it for a year before I heard it elsewhere.
We also started a family phrase that infected the entire high school population of Yokota Air Base, but I think it died out before it could spread anywhere else--My brother's girlfriend used "TMI" (too much information) all the time, and after she'd said it a few times he paused, thought for a minute, and said "...the monkey itches?" So "itchy monkey" in our family means "not of general interest!" (another family phrase borrowed from Cheaper by the Dozen)--after we'd been using it for a while I started to hear people I didn't know saying it.
Language! it's viral.
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| Re: Local Phrases and Sayings [message #3903 is a reply to message #3367 ] |
Fri, 07 November 2008 01:47 |
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My son, when he was about 2 1/2, was sitting on a couch watching me paint a piece of furniture. When I was done, I realized I had almost painted the kid into the corner. So I said, put your foot here, then here, then jump and I will catch you, and he said "Smells like a plan to me!"
So know the family says 'smells like a plan" all the time.
"And by the way you look fantastic in your boots of Chinese plastic."
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