What a timely thread! I was just wondering about the phrase “Gangway! Coming through!” I know the 2nd part, but how the heck did ‘gangway’ get mixed up into that?
Isn’t gangway the name for a plank leading off of a ship? So “gangway, coming through” might mean “hey the gangway’s down, watch out, pirates offloading” or something like that?
I actually made a topic about this one on here years ago:
“Shit-eating grin”
If I remember correctly, nobody else really understood it either and I received a huge number of different, half-hearted guesses.
Who is going to smile if they’re eating shit? Why does it imply that currently eating shit or already having eaten shit would make one grin? Is this figurative shit? Like talking shit? Even so, it doesn’t make much sense…because making someone eat their words is a bad thing for them…so why would they be grinning?
Makes no sense as a phrase.
ETA: A second one I never understood is “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it”.
Well, it would make sense if people actually had the power to control the weather, but since they can’t, how does this one make a lick of sense? Often I hear it said when people are complaining about adverse conditions in which they do have the power to control, so why would someone else liken it to something they had no control over?
I just don’t get it.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9268452&postcount=7 or shit eating grin explanation
I always thought it was a perversion of “gain way”, and that it meant “get out of my way,” but in a more polite manner.
Why? Either use the word in its entirety like a mature person, or find a way of phrasing the sentence to use something that’s not a swear word.
Sorry, that’s my pet peeve- people censoring out swear words on a site which specifically allows them for no particular reason. We all know the word you meant, so asterisking out a few letters doesn’t make it somehow non-offensive.
Good point there…I guess I would just be trying to keep my lips as far away from the shit as possible but frowning/in anguish about it. The look on my face wouldn’t be confused as a grin, let me tell you, hahaha.
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But what does the Grandmother suck eggs expression mean? Where did it come from?
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It doesn’t really work now, but if your grandmother had been an adult in the depression she may well have sucked eggs. This means to poke a hole in each end of an egg and suck out the contents, which you can then use as normal. But you now also have an intact eggshell which can be painted decoratively or whatever; they tried to reuse everything in those times..
The saying is used when you tell someone how to do something that you should have known they would know perfectly well how to do - say, trying to teach a 16yo how to use facebook.
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one I never understood is “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it”.
Well, it would make sense if people actually had the power to control the weather, but since they can’t …
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… which is precisely the point of Mark Twain’s joke. It’s not a saying.
My understanding of the phrase “Shit Eating Grin” is that it’s a reference to the sort of disturbingly happy grin that someone who’s just eaten a bunch of drugs (sometimes referred to as “shit”) would be expected to have on their face.
And, like most folk etymologies it’s probably completely wrong, but probably no more wrong than any of the other explanations for the term’s origins.
Whaaaat? No, it definitely doesn’t mean that. Have you ever been around someone who’s pissed off for whatever reason, and they get really pessimistic about things? Or they snap at the slightest provocation? Or they get really snarky if someone else has good fortune? Or they seek out others that are in a foul mood and erupt into this bitch-fest?
It seems counter-intuitive to want to hurt others when you’ve just been reminded how much that sucks. So why would someone do that? Because…misery loves company.
Even been in the gym and tried to read a book on the treadmill, but when you got to the bottom of the page, you realize you didn’t retain anything on that page, so you have to read it again? That’s because you didn’t read for comprehension. You were just, as my friend puts it, “keeping your eyes busy.”
I always took that phrase to mean the fake smile you have just after your boss yells at you or you fall on your face in front of everyone. It’s when you either want to or have to pretend to be happy, despite being embarrassed or sad.
“Simpson! Get in here! Eat this plate of shit.”
“Yum! My favorite! Sure is some tasty shit, Mr. Burns.” [shit eating grin]
To me, that simply means that some people will bitch about the most inconsequential things. It’s an exaggeration, of course, because they should be bitching about being hung, not the condition of the rope.
It doesn’t really work now, but if your grandmother had been an adult in the depression she may well have sucked eggs. This means to poke a hole in each end of an egg and suck out the contents, which you can then use as normal. But you now also have an intact eggshell which can be painted decoratively or whatever; they tried to reuse everything in those times.
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As a slight hijack, I wanted to say I own several decorative eggshells, painted by my grandmother who did exactly as described above. She also painted wooden and ceramic eggs.
I’ve also heard the phrase as “don’t teach your grandpa to chew cheese”. It means “Don’t try to teach someone how to do something that they’ve already been doing successfully long before you came around.”
You are partly correct; the “gangway” is any narrow walkway, like the passage between seats in a theatre, or that connecting ship to shore (sometimes the “gangplank”).
Point is that it is invariably narrow. Usually has really only room for one to pass. So “gangway, comming through” warns others not to come the other way, because there isn’t room to pass - generalized, “get out of the way”.
The saying is far older than that*.
It’s pretty clear to me that the reason grandma is sucking the eggs isn’t to get a nice shell she can decorate – she’s doing it because she lost her teeth, and back when the phrase was coined false teeth were incredibly hard/expensive to impossible to get. So grandma sucked a lot of eggs (no chewing required). And you’d be an idiot to try to teach someone so experienced at it how to do it.
*I actually haven’t researched it.Tolkien uses it in The Hobbit (1937), but I’m pretty sure I’ve encountered it in earlier sources.
“From your mouth to God’s ear”
“Horses for courses”
“Dog’s breakfast”
Maybe these phrases are English, or maybe they’re just gay, but I don’t understand them and they annoy me considerably.
“I wish that your words would travel from your mouth to God’s ear, so that God will hear and act upon them.” Or, in short, “I wish that what you just said would happen”.
Different racehorses are suited for different types of racecourses; some run better in mud, etc. It’s a case of some things/people being better suited for some situations than others.
I assume this is a cooking analogy, as in “you’ve messed up cooking breakfast so badly that it’s only fit to give to the dog to eat”. It means to make a complete mess of something or otherwise do a task very badly.
But speaking of dogs: can anyone tell me why being the “dog’s bollocks” is a *good *thing?
WAG: if you have a dog that hasn’t been neutered, the bollocks are the prized part of the dog for breeding purposes. They also tend to be rather prominently on display, on many dogs…
“They’re sure full of piss and vinegar!” I don’t get that one. I know it’s meant to say someone is full of energy, or spunk. But I don’t see why piss and vinegar would ever be mixed in the first place. Does piss and vinegar do something crazy if you mix it? Maybe I’m just being to literal.
Until today I didn’t understand “Coyote Ugly”. I thought it was a weird name for a bar where the women don’t actually look all that bad.
But apparently it refers to the very specific situation where you wake up after you’ve been drunk and find yourself in bed with someone you apparently had sex with the previous evening asleep across your arm, and they’re so ugly that you would rather gnaw off your arm, like a coyote caught in a trap, rather than chance waking said ugly person up.
That;'s a pretty specific set of circumstances, and I never woulda guessed that this was the origin of the phrase.
I don’t know how the term “to be beside oneself” (meaning agitated or upset about something) arose.