# Phrases your (grand)parents used **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2009, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245 "2009-07-25T20:53:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/21 "2009-07-26T03:48:01Z")
I had an aunt who’d once in awhile come out with “The things you see when you don’t have a gun…” > [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Jesus Christ, American popular music has changed so much, it _really_ blows my mind. My grandmother used to sing “Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie”. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/22 "2009-07-26T03:58:56Z")
Mom would call us, we’d say, “I’m coming”, and she’d respond, **"So’s Christmas."** Bend over within eyeshot of my mom and you were likely to hear, **"I wish I had a pea-shooter."** And of course, **"To each his own (said the old lady as she kissed the cow."** ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/23 "2009-07-26T05:38:26Z")
**You want a thick ear?** Asked by my Dad, and meaning he’d slap us so hard our ear would swell. Fun times. ---
**Author:** ![dada2fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ccd318/32.png) [@dada2fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dada2fish)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/24 "2009-07-26T05:42:01Z")
This thread makes me think of my Dad who died last year. He had a great rapport with little kids and if some kid he was talking to said something impressive he’d say real proud, “My! You’re a fart smeller, er, I mean a smart feller!” It never failed to crack them up. Edited to add, I just remembered one my mom used to say when me and my siblings were small. If one of us was whining and saying something like, “I’m bored!” or “I’m hot!”, she’d say, “I’m Lorraine, nice to meet you.” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/25 "2009-07-26T06:01:43Z")
> [@MissSwitac](#): > > “You’re a fart smeller, er, I mean a smart feller!” My dad said that. So did his father. I say it sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/26 "2009-07-26T06:04:27Z")
**’Taint what you want, but what you eat that makes you fat.** **Way-ull… It ain’t plumb, but it’s pert’ nigh.** (Alternately: It’s pert’ nigh, but not plumb.) **It’s close enough for government work.** (Three years in the Army, 20 years in the Navy, 22 years in the FAA. He should know!) ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/27 "2009-07-26T06:32:55Z")
**"He wouldn’t make puke for a buzzard."** Said about someone extremely unattractive or otherwise undesirable. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/28 "2009-07-26T06:44:57Z")
Dad: **Be kind to otters** (others) **Be beacule** (pronounced “beek-yule” - no idea where this came from. He means “be careful”) **This is the limit!** (quoting his grandma) ---
**Author:** ![Marlitharn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@Marlitharn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marlitharn)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/29 "2009-07-26T06:57:50Z")
“It’s colder 'n a kraut out there!” Grandpa was a WWII vet. I assume that’s where that saying came from. Once I heard him say, “Well, stick a finger up your ass and holler snake!” I have absolutely no idea what this means, but he was looking at a woman in a bikini when he said it. One from Grandma: “That boy could tear up a cannonball in a sandbox with a rubber hammer.” Usually used to refer to my stepfather. I’ve appropriated it to refer to my son. It’s the circle of life. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/30 "2009-07-26T07:33:48Z")
Heh… my dad used to say “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” all the time. Ma didn’t swear when we were kids, so her expression of surprise was usually “Holy catfish!” And when she wanted to make certain we knew that the sentence just uttered was The Law, she’d follow up with “Period. Amen. Glory Hallelujah.” (I suspect she got that one from my grandmother but I have no firm evidence to back it up.) Frustration - at a car that refused to turn over, for example - was met with an exasperated “Come _on_, fel-las!” ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/31 "2009-07-26T08:16:43Z")
My grandmother: “Well I’ll swan.” Since “I’ll be darned” was too close to taking the Lord’s name in vain.) Also: “Well I never!” For particular vehemence she would say, “Good night Grace!” Her response to “If I had…” musings was, “And if you had wheels you’d be a tea cart!” For some reason this always cracked me right up. My grandfather: “Well I’ll be picked off a vine and eaten grape-by-grape by a girl in her teens.” (From a William Saroyan story he really liked. _Really_ liked.) ---
**Author:** ![longPath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@longPath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/longPath)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/32 "2009-07-26T11:47:28Z")
My Grandmother who was born in 1898, would sometimes address me as Jo Jo. “C’mere Jo Jo”, she might say or, “How was school today, Jo Jo?” When I was older, I asked her about it. She told me about seeing [Jo Jo the Dog Faced Boy](http://thehumanmarvels.com/?p=59) when she was a young girl. It became a common schoolyard taunt in the early 20th century. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/33 "2009-07-26T11:58:57Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > My grandmother: “Well I’ll swan.” My grandmother always used that one, too. I believe its origins are from the days of radio, from a commercial for Swan dishwashing liquid. The announcer would always say “Well, I’ll Swan!” after extolling its virtues. Caught on with the public, like “Where’s the beef”? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/34 "2009-07-26T12:25:39Z")
My mom used to tell me when I got underfoot “You’re like horseshit, you’re everywhere,” which puzzled me because by my time horseshit was nowhere. In her day, I suppose, there was a lot of horseshit around. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/35 "2009-07-26T12:30:09Z")
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph” is my primary interjection as well. Sometimes “Iusus, aMhuirra, agus Yoseph.” Got that from a Great Uncle and it just stuck. “I’d imagine so . . .” My Grandfather. “That boy ain’t got the good sense God gave a cucumber” Great Uncle (a different one) “Come on in and beat the heat” Said to a visitor at the side door. ---
**Author:** ![PapSett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/36 "2009-07-26T12:39:40Z")
My grandpa always used to say ‘it’s colder than belly-blue hell’. No idea hat belly-blue hell is, but I like the sound of it, and say it myself now. Dad used the ‘shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds’. Not pits, seeds. He also said ‘colder than a witch’s…’(what MOST people say is tit) _pause_ ‘toenail. You thought I was gonna say something else, didn’t you?’ I miss my dad. ☹ Another of his silly sayings, if he had to pee badly, when he got out of the bathroom he would say ‘I was about to pissle in the thistle’. I got called Snicklefritz too, mostly by Grandpa, who was Greman. ---
**Author:** ![KlondikeGeoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@KlondikeGeoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KlondikeGeoff)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/37 "2009-07-26T18:10:49Z")
Oh yeah, “That would gag a maggot” about some disgusting food. “That guy could break an anvil with a hammer” about somebody who always broke things. ---
**Author:** ![schnuckiputzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/38 "2009-07-26T18:31:45Z")
My mother’s 97, so a lot of her stuff is very strange. I got called ‘Schnickelfritz’, but the family was Mennonite, so that is understandable. As Germans, we tend to cook large amounts of food, and mom always called it “cooking for thrashers” as you would feed all the neighbors that came in to help you harvest. And if our rooms were messy, they looked like “Fibber McGee’s closet” something apparently from an oldtime radio show. A large group of people, especially kids, got called “Cox’s army”. I have no idea where that one came from. ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/39 "2009-07-26T18:43:57Z")
If we had to run errands around town, my mother would say we’d been ‘all round Robin Hood’s barn.’, which it took me forever to figure out was the entirety of Sherwood forest. My father used to threaten to 'rip yer bloody arms off, and shove ‘em up yer nostrils’, which was from Aunty Jack, on the television. He also used the phrase ‘Dung in a bucket!’ as an expletive, which I guess is nice and assonant with what he might want to say. My grandmother once got very very angry about something, and was heard to say, “drat.” Seriously, it was An Event, as she never swore. She was forever threatening to feed us bread and dripping for dinner (but never did. A shame, I loved bread and dripping. But for her it was poor people food.) I say ‘half past’ and so forth, but I had trouble when I first moved to the states figuring out that “quarter of” meant before the hour referred to, as we only used “quarter to” or “quarter past”. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245/40 "2009-07-26T19:26:22Z")
> [@schnuckiputzi](#): > > A large group of people, especially kids, got called “Cox’s army”. I have no idea where that one came from. I believe you’re looking for [Coxey’s Army](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey%27s_Army). And yeah, Fibber McGee’s closet was a running gag on the radio serial “Fibber McGee and Molly” - essentially the soundman overturning a tub of assorted junk whenever McGee had to go to the closet to get something. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-your-grand-parents-used/504245.md?page=3)