Pray tell…what song would that be?
What’s that a mix up of? It sound pretty normal to me just the way it is…
Creepy.
This thread contains my second (and now my latest) post to the SDMB.
Don’s right…a true mixed metaphor is not just some frankensteinian aphorism.
The classic example of a mixed metaphor is from Hamlet’s soliloquoy: “…take arms against a sea of trouble.” If you’re going to take arms, metaphorically speaking, it’s against an army or host, not some body of water.
Viz, Zoggie, you iron out wrinkles, not bugs.
It’s from Happy Endings (Romeo and Juliet) by Andrew Ratchin. A cheerfully cynical musing on Romeo and Juliet, and romance in general. The full quatrain is
Maybe a lover comes along
Maybe in story or in song
Maybe the heart is really strong
A million lemmings can’t be wrong
Full lyrics at http://www.yellowtailrecords.com/lyrics/lyr_belly.html#Romeo
And nobody could mix a metaphor like Yogi Berra.
“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
“If people aren’t gonna come to the ball park, how can you stop them.”
“Pair up in threes.”
My personal fave, attributed to Villanova basketball coach Jack Kraft:
“That’s the nail that broke the coffin’s back.”
I work with a woman who regularly mixes her metaphors. Such as: I’m between a rock and the frying pan.
Also, (not really a mixed metaphor, but funny nevertheless) from the movie Tommy Boy:
He tries to say: You can take a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a bull’s ass, but wouldn’t you rather take the butcher’s word for it?
But it comes out: You know, you can get a good look at a butcher’s ass by shoving your head up it but wouldn’t you rather take his word for it?
From Walt Kelly:
“You can’t pull my wool over the ice!”
In “ironing the bugs out” of something the mixed metaphors are metaphor 1: ironing, meaning eliminating wrinkles and thus problems; metaphor 2: getting the bugs out, meaning
eliminating problems. But they are mixed and thus present a picture of bugs being burnt by a hot iron, which is not what the person making the metaphor meant to bring to mind…
I have a friend in the Border Patrol whose boss was raking him over the coals for a poor Spanish test score.
His boss remarked “If you can’t cut the cheese you’re out of here!”
Robot Arm wrote:
Some more Yogi Berra-isms:
“Batting is 90% mental. The other half is physical.”
“Everybody line up in alphabetical order according to height.”
“I didn’t say half of the things I’ve said.”
Cricket commentary is always good for a few of these…a couple of examples:
“Shoaib [Mohammed] should have been shot at dawn when he came back to the pavilion.”
(After a dropped catch) “The batsman survives by the skin of his pants.”
Actually, most cricket blunders fall into the category of “Colemanballs”…but that’s another thread.
In his book Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort-Of History of the United States, Dave Barry made up a fictitious bad writer who described the 1929 stock market thusly:
“A paper tiger with feet of clay, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“You can’t pull the wool out from under my nose!”
Or…
“You can’t pull the wool out from under my nose to the grindstone that gathers no moss!”
Stumbling from the mouth of my mother…
“The squeeky wheel gets the worm.”
…kinda makes sense though… but I can think of better lubricants…
Peeing on weenies is a malapropism itself, I think. The saying I’ve heard that is similar to that is spoken to someone who displays a bad attitude for no reason. For example:
Person 1: Hey, Person 2 [catchy name, huh?], can I borrow your stapler?
Person 2: Get off my back, jerk!
Person 1: HEY, who peed in your WHEATIES this morning?
The meaning, I think is obvious, when it is understood that “Wheaties” is a type of breakfast cereal here in the U.S. Someone relieving themselves in my bowl of my favorite breakfast cereal would probably give me a bad attitude, too.
Off the top of my head, no mixed metaphors are on the tip of my tongue.
I was working late inspecting machined parts when the boss said “you better check those parts good, because the customer is going to look them over with a 10-foot pole.” Problem is, I understood him.
If a bear shits in the woods,
and no-one is there to smell it,
does it still stink?
Out of the frying pan, into a handbasket.
Once the other shoe drops, you can’t put the genie back into the can of worms.
Also, from Opus, in Berke Breathed’s Bloom County:
“You can lead a yak to water, but, uh… but you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke.”
In Tom Stoppard’s play ‘The Real Inspector Hound’, one character exclaims, “The skeleton in the closet has come home to roost!”
Snaf