The other day my mom busted out, “I don’t know him from Adam’s off ox.” which is a great expression that I don’t think I had heard before.
The ones I can remember have already been mentioned or are fairly common.
My dad also used the “you must not have been holding your mouth right” saying.
Not too uncommon, but it still makes me smile: If you were sick, a friend of the family always said “Ya got the epizootics!” or “the epizooties.” (Pronouncing the zoo like the word zoo, not the way it’s pronounced when it’s used as a real scientific word.) I’ve seen that a few times in books, too, for an unknown minor illness. My mother just called any unknown illness “the heebie-jeebies.”
My dad used to point up at jets leaving contrails and say “Look at those sky scrapers!” That was confusing to me since I thought skyscrapers were tall buildings.
Ah, you mean “the punies”, naturally the plural of puny.
Reminds me that I was grown before I learned that the opposite of ‘off’ is ‘rail’.
Hahaha! That’s kind of what I pictured only black.
Here’s another hair one referring to a beard/goatee:
“Why would I cultivate something on my face that grows wild on my ass?”
Ha. From the Wikipedia article:
Robert Duvall’s character in the movie “Ramblin’ Rose” uses “epizootics”. A doctor corrects him on the pronunciation, and asks him if that’s what he means. Duvall doubles down and says that no, epizootics is a something else altogether.
My brother used to tell me that I had “the creepin’ crud” whenever I was sick. That or “the crawlin’ nevergetovers”.
In 1983 I traveled to England and in many of the public ladies’ rooms there was a dish with a little sign that said, “2 p,” meaning you were asked to put two pennies there when you used the facilities. Strictly honor system. No payment boxes on the stalls or anything as one sometimes found in the US.
My late husband had a great expression that I’ve made liberal use of over the years. When someone wishes for something difficult or unlikely: “The people in hell want ice water.”
The creepin’ crud! We used that one, too.
Same here with the creepin’ crud. If you were constantly craving food, my mother called it the “hungry horrors.” She also said, “crazier than a shithouse rat,” which I think may be a Maine thing, because I think I read it in a Stephen King book. If you told my father you were tired, he would say, “when I was your age, I couldn’t even SPELL tired.” Still not sure about that one. He also called boogers snutchies, which I have never heard anywhere else.
My mom called pimples/blackheads “bleekies.” I still do that. Dunno where it came from, though.
This one even appears in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. Martini says it to Clarence and George, during the “never been born” part.
I even remember it appearing in a couple of old cartoons; the lions would pace back and forth in their cage, with a pole between them, and every time they passed it they’d each say “bread and butter”.
Another one from my mother-in-law: “He’s got more (whatever) than Carter’s got little liver pills!” Apparently after a popular patent medicine that was around for many years.
And another I remembered from a podcast I was listening to a couple weeks ago (The Dollop, ep. 130, “The Bald Knobbers”, if anyone’s interested): “Boy she pops!” Apparently, in the 1880s, it was something to say to show enthusiastic agreement, like shouting “hear hear!” at a town meeting, or just a “hell yeah!” I kinda like it. Let’s bring this one back.
They cleaned it up for the movie. In the stage play, he says “I’m a bastard” (which is what “son of a sea cook” was used as a euphemism for, since “son of a sea cook” stood in for “son of a bitch”)
What was Mortimer Brewster’s occupation? He was a theater critic. I figure this was playrwright Joseph Kesselring’s way of calling all of his critics “bastards”. Every night, onstage.
My Daddy used to say, when in a predicament, “You’re up shit-creek without a paddle” or “You’re writing checks your ass can’t cash”.
Speaking of incomprehensible: my stepfather grew up near and probably on the Crow reservation in Montana. I’m sure he must have picked up some Crow words, but he would say something in what he purported to be Crow, and then say "That’s Crow; it means ‘when you play with buffalo, you step in buffalo shit’ or some such. I’m convinced that he was probably just speaking gibberish that sounded like Crow language and then ‘translating’ it to fit his purpose.
This got me thinking about “Hurts So Good”:
You always look so inviting
You ain’t as green as you are young
I’m guessing this means she’s “experienced” for her age, been around the block a few times…?
My grandmother said “I don’t know him from Adam’s housecat”, which brought up many questions in my young mind - Does she mean Adam of Garden of Eden fame? Adam had a housecat? Adam had a house?
The next door neighbor had a daughter that was kinda forgetful.
And her mother would say, “She would forget her head if it wasn’t fastened on.”