Preface: I am Canadian. I live in Southwestern Ontario, but work in Detroit, Michigan. Over the past two years, many of the subtle differences between Canada and the United States have been discovered and discussed in my workplace. These have included such varying things as french fries at Taco Bell, adding the “u” to the words colour and favour, but most frequently, the differences in speech.
Aside from getting kidded a bit about my accent, which is slight, I have recently discovered that several of the commonplace expressions that I have grown up knowing are unheard of on this side of the river.
So, to both my fellow Canadians and to my friend Americans, are my co-workers and/or my neighbourhood just strange, or have you ever heard/used the following expressions:
“Right proper sht," as in, "He gave me right proper sht for rear-ending his car.”
And
“Hell’s half-acre,” as in, “After I rear-ended his car, he chased me all over hell’s half-acre.”
An Aussie friend of mine just described someone as being “uglier than a hatful of monkey’s bums,” which I must remember to drop into conversation sometime.
I’ve known “hell’s half-acre” for years now, but I can’t remember if I heard it all the time as a kid or if I saw it somewhere and liked it. I grew up in NH if that helps at all.
I think “hell’s half-acre” is from the Southern U.S. God knows how it moved that far north.
I’m reading an old Ross Thomas novel at the moment, and your OP remided me of a particularly good paragraph about a character called Faraj Abedsaid, a Libyan terrorist with a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma…
**“Abedsaid sighed and said, ‘The Colonel’s gonna be madder’n a shot bobcat with a toothache.’ During his four-year stay in Oklahoma, Abedsaid had carefully acquired a large collection of aphorisms, metaphors, and similies peculiarly indigenous to the American southwest. He delighted in peppering his conversation with them, especially in London, where it seemed to offend almost everyone.”
If you are into confusing people, here’s another one, though I can’t say I’ve heard it used outside of the person I heard it from and myself:
In the appropriate circumstance, say “thumper’s mom, thumper’s mom,” repeated over and over, until someone asks you what the heck you are talking about.
When someone does ask, the explanation is: “Remember the movie Bambi? Remember what Thumper’s mom told him?”
If they still don’t recall, she told Thumper, “If you don’t have somethin’ nice to say, don’t say anything all.”
The co-worker I heard this from uses it often in meetings where he is required to be PC. He’s not a PC kind of guy, and often has trouble keeping his comments to himself. So when he just has to say something, it’s “thumper’s mom, thumper’s mom, thumper’s mom…”
When my hometown, Fort Worth, was a rip-roaring cowtown in the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was an area of town called Hell’s Half Acre. This area was home to a number of saloons, gambling halls, and bordellos where the cowpokes liked to spend their time and money.
I love gravy on my French fries, if you’re talking about cream gravy. It’s more common in this neck of the woods than you think.
Also, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen fries at a Taco Bell, but I have seen them at a Del Taco in Orange County, California. But it just doesn’t seem right to mix French fries and Mexican food.
I have never heard ‘right proper s*it’ (which does seem rather British), but have heard ‘hell’s half-acre.’ Of course it could be because I was raised outside of Detroit and frequently crossed the river.
One of my favorite expressions came from a rather colorful friend of mine, sufferring from a bad hangover. She said, “I feel like a truckload of mashed assholes.”
My grandad’s favorite was “I feel like I’ve been shot at and missed, and shit at and hit”, which always seemed to me quite appropriate for situations where you’ve been been knocked about a bit but have escaped an even more serious misfortune.
My dad, who is a wealth of colorful expressions, came up with a new one (to me) yesterday. He was complaining about an ugly house in their neighborhood and said it “stood out like a new dime on a goat’s ass”.
I don’t know where he gets 'em but he’s got a lot of 'em.
My husband (Australian) has a million of 'em.
When the dog is excitedly thrashing her toy around:
“She’s going off like a frog in a sock!”
About certain people we know:
“He’s dumber than a bucket of hair.”
A high school girlfriend of mine used to say “Well smack my face and call me a Nigress” when she found out something shocking. I’ve never had the nerve to repeat it.
How 'bout “he looked like shit on a stick”? anyone heard that one before?
Using the word proper like that is, as was hinted at, a British thing.
More specifically it seems to be popular with people from the lower grade areas of Manchester so it is preety regional.
Other ways it mght be used
Proper on top = The situation is risky in terms of being caught, a criminal expression
Proper mad = A hectic or chaotic situation.
Proper money = To pay the going rate-especailly in the car trade where it often means to pay too much.
This use of proper seems to have only surfaced in the late 80’s.
I do. Any kind. Cream gravy, chicken gravy, beef gravy…yum. Especially on big crinkle fries. I also like dipping fries in au jus from a french dip sandwich.
Fries in homemade Thousand Island are pretty good too, but I haven’t done that in ages. I usually did it with wedges, not shoestrings.
