Yup, my old unit. In WWII, in the Aleutian Campaign, some Seabees made an operating machine gun using, among other things, washing machine parts. I was on a team that got bored and made a mortar out of some 4" galvanized pipe. Drop a projectile down the pipe and touch off a chamber filled with acetylene. The Marines weren’t pleased when it punched a hole in their helo pad.
When I was a little kid, one time my Mom sat me down and explained to me that she loved me more than my sister, who was a “bad seed” I thought that was pretty messed up, even at the time but I didn’t say anything about it.
I have 7 sibs. I am the only one with blond hair and light blue eyes. My Daddy always said I must be the milkmans kid. My nickname was boo-boo, so I felt alittle odd, to say the least. I didn’t know til I was quite grown that his nickname was ‘cotton’ as a child, I had never noticed his hair was blond and his eyes light blue.
In Spain we say of someone who is unaware of very basic stuff ése viaja como las maletas: “that one travels like suitcases”, that is, he may go lots of places but he doesn’t know it.
My uncle, who was a merchant navy captain, would say instead ése viaja como el piloto de un barco. Most people just thought it was a strange expression but didn’t say anything. Us inquisitive nephews eventually asked what’s being completely unawares of life around you got to do with a ship’s pilot / helmsman / navigator: shouldn’t that person be extremely aware of the ship’s surroundings?
Turns out the same name applies to a ship’s figurehead, which nowadays in most ships is just reduced to a little knob at the prow.
My mother used to use “Son of a sea cook” as a sort of euphemism for “Son of a bitch.”
In the movie “Arsenic and Old Lace”, Cary Grant’s character, Mortimer Brewster, was delighted to learn that he was not in fact related to the (more than slightly insane) Brewsters, but was actually the illegitimate son of, yes, a sea cook.
Not exactly what the OP was asking for, but…
My parents never spoke Chinese unless they were mad at us. And since we didn’t understand Chinese, it was just incomprehensible yelling. I doubt they even knew what they were saying; they weren’t fluent in Chinese either, I’m pretty sure they were just yelling whatever their parents used to yell at them.
Sometimes, Dad would rub our heads (or give a noogie) and say, “Wish Cotton was a monkey.” Apparently it’s from an old Little Rascals short, where one of the kids is rubbing a magic lamp, trying to turn one of the guys (Cotton) into a monkey.
My Nana, when she went to the bathroom, would say “I have to spend a penny”. I’ve never heard that anywhere else.
When my dad encountered heavy traffic, he’d say “It’s Coxey’s Army!” I had no idea what that meant and just now looked it up. Wiipedia says:
Now I still have no idea what Dad meant. If he actually knew anything himself, I’m sure he wasn’t sympathetic to the cause.
I believe this is a reference to public toilets which have a coin-operated lock on the stall door. Maybe they cost a penny when she was little.
Sure, but at least there were some guys there who could repair the helo pad.
An elderly Aunt had another version of that one. When aggravated she would say “that makes my butt wanna suck a lemon!”
Which has me laughing right now, actually. Picturing an extra puckered-up butt hole and all…
Due to coin operated facilities in the UK, “spend a penny” was (and perhaps still is) a very common phrase there.
Pretty common, if old fashioned, yep. The sort of euphemism your older relatives might use.
My Dad was very fond of ‘you’re not so green as you’re cabbage lookin’!', which I think means ‘you’re not as stupid as you look’.
One of my mom’s: My/Your hair looks like a fright wig!
As a kid, I always wondered if there was somewhere you could actually buy a fright wig!
I heard this as “don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs!” But it wasn’t my parents who said it - I heard it on “Ren and Stimpy” and I had to look it up. I’m still not entirely sure what it’s supposed to mean (I get that it means “don’t explain how to do something to someone who already knows,” but I don’t understand why Grandma would be sucking eggs.)
Threads like this make me sad that American speech isn’t as colorful and expressive anymore. I do my best to keep as much as I can recall alive, and hope my children will remember some of it to pass along.
Some things that were said to me didn’t make sense until I was older, like:
cat fur to make kitten britches
if wishes were horses then beggars would ride
can’t never could
fancy as a fur-lined piss pot
And now there’s Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Enigma-Wigs-Womens-Fright-Wig/dp/B00JRTKLLS
Please share. Curse words are the one things that I never hear from my Japanese husband or his family. I would like to pop out with one once in a while, just to keep them on their toes.
When we were all in the car and ready to start out on a trip, my father might say “OK, we’re off like a screaming herd of turtles.” I suspect that was something he got from the military, either the army (1940) or the merchant marine during WWII.