Common where then?
I don’t know, taking into account the following lyrics from the song Jeepers Creepers, I think there is a case for cheaters being sunglasses, at least in some circles:
Jeepers, creepers…where’d ya get them peepers
Jeepers, creepers…where’d ya get those eyes
Gosh oh, git up…how’d they get so lit up
Gosh oh, gee oh…how’d they get that size
Golly gee…when you turn them heaters on
Woe is me…got to put my cheaters on
Personally, I think I’ve heard cheaters used to mean any type of glasses.
I knew it long before then. I’ve always read a lot, but don’t know exactly where I picked it up. Since I’d always known the term, I assumed everybody did. My wife hearing it (from me) for the first time was just a few months ago.
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(Raises hand) I did, and I’m pretty sure I learned it from one of those books by Unca Cece.
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Edit: re Post #38- Oh.
“I’ll be on you like ants on a fish head” nearly killed me.
Sorry for the hijack, but can someone explain the mysteries of Google to me? How can there be fewer hits on “swing a cat” than there are on “room to swing a cat”? Shouldn’t the results for “swing a cat” include the 710,000 hits for “room to swing a cat” PLUS any other instance of “swing a cat” that don’t include “room to”?
I remember my mother always used to tell me, " You have more excuses than Carter has little liver pills." I thought I understood it until one day we were having a conversation about former president Jimmy Carter and I asked, “Didn’t he have problems with his liver?” Umm, I don’t think I ever saw my mother laugh that hard.
My wife and I grew up with different uses of the term. I knew June Bugs as those large irridescent green beetles. She insists they refer to the little dun beetles that tend to gather at doorsteps to die.
In a similar fashion, I have always understand duffel bag to mean a cylindrical canvas bag that cinches with a drawstring at the top. But she used it to refer to what I call an athletic bag – a smaller cylindrical bag with that zips open along the side and has fabric handles. Turns out, judging by Google, a lot of other people fallen into the same error she has.
But as for phrases themselves, I truck in a lot of old expressions I dug out of some old book or other, and so I think people have just stopped asking, but I have the impression that people don’t give eachother the business anymore. And when someone mentions that I got a haircut, they seem not to know what to do with “I got 'em all cut.”
Robin Hood country (Nottingham / Yorkshire / Lincolnshire). I don’t know about common, but less uncommon.
I sort of knew what this meant, having recently heard it in The Right Stuff, but to be sure I looked it up on Wiktionary.
According to that esteemed but fallible source, the phrase actually did originate with the Mercury space program and gained popular use when the aforementioned film was released.
I had no idea it was that recent.
It’s from an old fable about a dog who slept in a feedbox, keeping the farm animals from eating. If you’re being “the dog in the manger”, you’re hoarding a valuable resource that someone else needs but you cannot use.
Means it got turned into a paper plane, right? 
The first time I heard that I said “What the hell is a mall cut?”
When I was working with a bunch of Florida Crackers years ago, a co-worker and I were both taking classes at the local University. He asked my advice on some detail of his schoolwork, and after I had explained the hard part, I said, “The rest is self-explanatory.”
Big mistake.
‘Em good ole boys done started hootin’ an’ hollerin’ “Self explanatory!?! Ther ya go, usin’ 'em big college words!”
For weeks after, they’d see me in the hall and shout, “There goes Mr. Self-Explanatory!”
Ironic, since the word, itself, is self-explanatory.
:dubious:
This exact scenario pretty much happened to me, although my mom always said “more [blank] than Carter’s got pills.” But yeah, she about cried laughing.
Also, nobody seems to know what I mean when I say that something was far away by referring how I was “all over hell’s half acre.” I think this is related to to the phrase “to hell and back.” Maybe.
Heard it and used it, but then, I spent a few years in the UK when I was a kid.
I’m wondering if the “cheaters” thing might be age related? I and a friend’s husband know what it means. He’s four years *older *than I am. On the other hand, *she’d *never heard of it until I mentioned it. She’s four years *younger *than I am.
… “And those that can’t teach, administrate. And those that can’t administrate, go into politics.”
I’m sure I have some unrecognized phrases, but I can’t think of any I know that I don’t know the meaning of…
Not really a phrase but more of a term, but I always see people say their interest has “peaked” or something “peaked” their curiosity.
Its “piqued”, people. Not peaked. Your curiosity did not climb a mountain, rather it was stimulated or raised. Similar meanings, I guess, which is why people get it confused so much
If the words are pronounced the same, then people are probably confused* for the same reason they are with toe the line and tow the line.
*Until just this moment I always thought it was peaked.
My mom has taken this up in the last few years–she never said it when I was a kid.
It’s actually rather irritating to me. Not sure why. Perhaps because my mom can NEVER find things on her own, but uses that god-forsaken idiom to criticize others’ driving.