I just always understood it to come from black people being so poor they had to make do with what was handy. As an aside, when I’d throw a fit over the “n” word my dad changed to saying “Afro-engineered”, which is no improvement whatsoever. He ought to know better, as when he grew up almost all the black people had more than they did!
This cite seems to imply that “lightning rod” is a somewhat generic term used for both lightning arrestors as well as lightning dissipaters.
There’s also the variant of “Ass over Tin Cup” presumably referring to a blind man who was turned upside down.
Dry as a bone.
Granted, old bones on dead people are dry, but bones in living people are very wet, so the saying is…partly wrong, or something?
“Clear as a bell”. WTF?
The last time I looked this up, jury-rigged was the earliest form, meaning, IIRC, temporarily constructed, a nautical term. I always figured “Jerry-built” referred to things thrown together in wartime (such as stuffing a blown tire with straw) with a back-of-the-hand to Jerry, the Germans.
Nigger-rigged, and the later Afro-engineered, were also ethnic slaps. :smack:
“I [did a random something] six ways from Sunday”
WTF?
What the hell does that mean? What’s six ways from Sunday? How do you get there?
I see you that and raise you “Clean as a whistle”.
There’s no general question here to be answered, so let’s try MPSIMS>
Moved. samclem GQ moderator
Interesting. The version I recall is “ass over teakettle”, and I always understood it to mean that someone was knocked (or fell) over with enough momentum that it turned into a nasty tumble.
What’s wrong with “clear as a bell”? A bell (a church bell, for example) makes a loud, clear tone. (You’ll find it’s usually applied to sound, speech, communication, etc. Visual things or other metaphors are usually “crystal clear.”)
Are these two the polite versions of “Arse over tit”? 
grey_ideas
And it’s corralary:
Healthy as a Horse.
Oh, so I can hop on your back and make you sprint a half-mile?
Not exactly what you all are discussing, but I’ve always hated, 'the early bird gets the worm". What about the poor early worm? He just gets eaten.
I think it’s because the worms are out all night, and try to head back to their holes before sun up. I remember digging for worms with a flash light when I was a kid, so I think they move around in the dark. Make any sense?
“Piss like a racehorse” always seemed odd to me. Do horses pee a lot? And do race horses pee even more? And do horses pee more than say cattle?
My theory on this is that horses just piss whenever they feel like it, and due to the size of a horse it is a very noticable affair. Fans attending a horse race would see the horse pissing whenever the horse felt like it, but our society frowns on us humans pissing whenever we feel the urge . . . we are supposed to adjourn to the privacy of a rest room. Therefore, a person who really had to piss has to “piss like a racehorse,” meaning they can’t wait for a restroom. Just a guess.
Well, someone who uttered that sentence you’ve placed in quotes would be guilty of not only a malapropism, but a historical inaccuracy to boot!
One phrase that bugs me is when someone exclaims of a beautiful girl that she’s “as pretty as shit”. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never found fecal matter breathtakingly beautiful (although some examples have certainly made me gasp for air). Also, what about “colder than Hell”? I’d assume that description would apply to Death Valley on its hottest day, or even the inside of a blast furnace operating at full power. So when applied to typical Arctic weather, it’s an accurate phrase, but not a very specific one.