Unless it’s a good thing. On a railroad you’ll be laboring mightily to get up the hill and coasting all the way down.
I would think lying down on a made bed would be a good thing, but people say, you made your bed, now lie in it as if it were a bad thing.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
Why the heck not? I got the cake. It’s going in my mouth.
I recently learned that this makes sense, it’s just said the wrong way around. You can’t EAT your cake and also HAVE (keep) it.
If you don’t think too hard about it, “spared no expense” sounds like it should mean “didn’t spend any money.”
No. “No expense was spared” = “every expense was incurred”.
That’s the actual meaning, but “spare” can also mean “give” or “make available” (as in “could you spare some change?”)
“Spare” in this sense means to refrain from using or consuming. So, semantically, if I say “can you spare some change?” I’m not saying “can you give me some change?” so much as “can you deprive yourself of some change?”
Why do people say “you don’t say” right after the person says something? Shouldn’t they say “you just said”?
I think it started out as the equivalent of “you’ve got to be kidding me!”, but people began using it sarcastically as the equivalent of “no shit, Sherlock,” until its original non-sarcastic usage died out. (See also: “whoop-dee-doo!”)
Another one I thought of… “I see what you are saying” doesn’t mean they visualize what was said.
My favorite is “you can’t make this stuff up”, after usually reading a true headline or discussing gossip.
Bill Burr has a great standup bit about it that goes something like “ Well have you seen star wars? someone made that up.”
From a Peanuts comic:
LINUS [to Snoopy]: I don’t suppose you could let me hide out in your doghouse….
SNOOPY [thinks]: “Don’t suppose” is a good way to put it!
Yes, I’ve always heard it as “TOO FAR out over your skis".
The other day I had a debone steak with the bone still in
:rimshot:
My take on it is that you’re not describing someone who is both hot, and a mess, but instead, describing someone as a mess that is hot. A “hot mess” presumably being more difficult and unpleasant to clean up than a room temperature mess.
The irony here is that using “literally” to mean, “factual” is, itself, a figurative usage. “Literal” originally meant, “having to do with letters or writing.” Describing something as “literally” happening was a figurative way of saying, “So totally true it might as well be in a book,” which at a time when the only book most people would ever see was a Bible, was considered a very high standard of truth.
Dad was fond of responding to thank-you’s with “It’s the least I could do”…waiting a couple seconds…“if I could have done less, I would have…”
Yep- like the similar term “hot garbage” which isn’t used for people.
Or Hawkeye on MASH: “Never let it be said that I didn’t do the least I could do.”