Yeah. If you don’t get the straw packed into the mattress properly, it can poke you through the ticking.
The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
This just generically describes something before it became posterous.
But if you like to paddle out on the Arctic Ocean in a little paddle boat, be sure to dress very warmly, because you can’t use a candle (or Sterno or whatever) to keep your little boat warm – it will catch fire and sink.
You can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
The phrase was originally, “I couldn’t care less.” This actually does make sense. For some reason, a lot of people have dropped the “n’t,” which makes it sound nonsensical. One explanation I’ve heard is that people who say, “I could care less” are being sarcastic. I don’t really buy this - I just think a lot of people don’t think about what they’re saying.
“Like two peas in a pod” = cunnigulus: to be split and eaten.
“Raining cats and dogs”= some animal peed on me OR those damn kids are throwing cats/dogs on the roof again.
“Hit the sack”= training for the Olympic hacky-sack team.
“Like two hens in the henhouse”= sleep all the time and wake up to take a dump.
“Having a chip on your shoulder” = tell Chip to get off.
I see both versions as, basically, making sense. “I couldn’t care less”, is obvious. “I could care less” might be construed as “I suppose I could – just – care less about this issue, than I actually do; but it would be very little less.” (Sarcasm, as mentioned above?) I do feel that “I could care less” has a little more of a contemptuous “bite” to it, than “I couldn’t…”
I remember a long discussion about “couldn’t care less,” and “could…” ditto, on a discussion board devoted to English-language matters. Consensus of opinion reached, was that “could care less” is what students of language usage call a “sturdy indefensible”: an expression which is at least to some degree wrong / nonsensical / inaccurate, but which many people persist in using, regardless.
I’ve always understood the not-crying-over-spilt-milk thing, as acknowledging that it’s only human and natural to be upset when something goes wrong; but if the misfortune (as with spilt miilk) is irreversible and un-recoverable, getting upset does not achieve anything or make the situation any better – it’s wiser to address something which you can improve.
A kind-of-related expression I’ve only encountered once, which I like but by which I’m rather bemused – I understand that it’s an Australianism – “You’d whinge if your arse was on fire.” I came across it in someone’s World War 2 memoirs. There was a military unit whose leader was Australian, but all the guys under him were British. The leader was fond of this expression, and came out with it to discourage complaining – general implication was, “you’re always complaining – you’d complain if life were perfect in every way”. The guys’ underlings told him that they found the expression a rather foolish one: if one’s arse is on fire, surely that is a truly distressing situation, giving one a very good reason for whinging. I agree with their logic here. Maybe you have to be an Aussie for the saying to make sense…
To which I’ll add one point I’ve never seen in other discussions of this idiom: sound trumps sense. It’s hard to say “I couldn’t care less” without sounding earnest! and sincere! (Like a society matron in a Three Stooges film saying “Why, I’ve NEVER been so INSULTED in my LIFE!”.) IOW, exactly the wrong tone for conveying blase nonchalance.
I see where you’re coming from here – the “prissiness factor” with the “couldn’t” version; and I concur that the “could” version, feels more hard-hitting.
I’ve always said “I couldn’t care less”, and will continue to do so; consciously changing to the other usage at my fairly late time of life would feel odd and wrong, and habit would probably be difficult to overcome. I do, though, see the “upside” of the other version.
Along the same lines, someone who takes a tumble is tits over ass. If it’s a bad enough fall wouldn’t you be ass over tits?
It’s negation by association. The negatory aspect of not gets applied to the phrase as a whole. For one reason or another the not gets dropped but no one minds because everyone knows it still means that they don’t care. We see the same thing happen with “I could/couldn’t give a damn.”
It’s an idiomatic phrase and it doesn’t have to make sense. After all, I’ve never actually seen a rain that really could be characterized as animal-like but 'raining cats and dogs" still gets across the idea.
Cakes aren’t that expensive. Buy two; have one and eat t’other.
You’d complain if they hung you with a new rope.
I get what it means but a strange way to express it.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” I don’t know many rich people with horses.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” It’s cheaper to just throw rocks at him.
“A watched pot never boils.” An unwatched pot causes a huge mess.
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black.” You should lay off the sauce if pots are talking.
“Still waters run deep.” Actually, they don’t run at all… they’re still.
A personal bugaboo of mine, having been raised in California and edumacated in the ways of the Gold Rush, is the common usage of “panning out” to mean “the plan has succeeded,” whereas the way I was taught, “panning out” meant you had taken all the gold out of your claim and now you had to go find a new one, which could (a) fail and you starve to death, (b) get you shot by somebody who thinks you’re trying to rustle his claim, or © get you eaten by a mountain lion, so “panning out” means “probably dying soon”, i.e., not a particularly welcome outcome.
Panning was a way of testing a stream for gold. Once gold was discovered, they would use other methods to get the rest of the gold, like sluice mining. A pan didn’t require any set-up, so a miner could go from place to place to look for gold quickly. Once a spot was found that had “panned out,” he could make a claim, set up his equipment and go to work.
I’ve seen it suggested about this one, that it’s not quite what it seems, and actually borders on nonsense – rather like the Aussie-ism “You’d complain if your arse was on fire”, which I cited earlier.
The saying as stands, would seem to suggest that it’s a kind of honour and compliment to the offender, to hang him with a new rope. It turns out, though, that in the business of hangmanship – being hanged with a new rope is more painful for the victim, than being hanged with a well-worn, more comfortable older rope.
I’ve recently learned that “Don’t shit where you eat” means to not fuck someone you work with.
How or why this came about is beyond me.
Because that’s a specific example of a more general concept of not performing a particular action in a particular environment when that is likely to have financial or other consequences. It’s most commonly used about romantic/sexual relationships, but I’ve also heard it used when people running side businesses cheat their coworkers/neighbors/relatives or when people act up at a business and end up losing a discount they previously enjoyed.
That is what it means. Or some similarly disheveled or sloppy appearance.
It may be worth crying over, but the phrase is “It’s no use crying…” You can cry all you want, but it’s not useful.
But then you wouldn’t be stuck. Being stuck is a necessary part of the phrase. “I’m standing near a rock and a hard place” isn’t very meaningful.
A cat on a hot roof would pick up one paw because it burns, but then the other, then another, and it’d look like he was jumping quickly from paw to paw. So the phrase means “jumpy.” What’s the problem?
But then you’d be in a knife fight, not a gun fight. I think it’s clear that the person not only brought a knife but failed to bring a gun. He doesn’t have both.
The kids aren’t throwing them up there; the animals are just going up there on their own. Then when it rains hard, they lose their footing and get washed off the roofs. So you get a bunch of water off the rooftops and the occasional stray animal.
The implication is that the person only whines, as opposed to doing something about the problem. He’s just standing there, letting his ass burn. The commander was telling his troops to quit whining and start fixing.
I get your drift, I think… I still feel that in the way the guy put it, it sounds weird, and not altogether rational. In the memoir, his subordinates told him that his pet phrase sounded silly; thereafter, he carried on frequently using it, only with the addition: “But that, they tell me, is the time to whinge.”