A couple of my dads, that I have used instinctivly without thought(and thought they were fairly common), But were immediatly loved by other people and incorporated into their vocabulary.
“It’s just another piss in the ocean”
and it’s counter part
“Well I’m not gonna try to piss out a forest fire”
Closer to shipping sand to the Sahara. Taking something with you that is cheap/free and in good supply at your destination. Newcastle was a popular coaling port. Ideally, a steam ship would throw the last shovelfull of coal on the grate as it anchored at Newcastle.
This one I picked up from some book or another, and I just love it…
“That’s as gay as old Dad’s hatband!”
Now, it seems obvious to me that it dates from long ago in America (along the lines of the “gay 90s”) meaning exuberant happiness, but it fits just as well for other things…
(hijack)
:eek: :eek: :eek: Yes, I grew up in the 80s, and I use the word “gay” to mean stupid or cheesy or however you would define that…
I have absolutely 0% anti-gay bias, and understand how it would be offensive. I’m careful only to use it in private. But you know what - I’m sick of parsing every word I say, and I’ve decided to let this one go. Probably because it’s absurd (to me) that I would be anti-gay.
Forget where (maybe one of Jim Bouton’s books) but I heard a description of a pitcher as, “He’s so tight you couldn’t pound a toothpick up his ass with a sledge hammer”.
Same vein, I have a friend who always suggests, in a bad neighborhood, “Lock your car up tighter than a nun’s cunt on Easter Sunday”.
What a lot of y’all are posting are metaphors or similes - statements of comparison or analogy between specific persons/things. (Similes use like, as, or than, with one entity to the left of the conjunction and the other on the right. Metaphors are freer in construction.)
Aphorisms would seem, by the above definition - and also by the way I’ve always seen the term used - to be more universal. Not just statements about whale snot or the Philadelphia Eagles or a particular salesperson capable of selling walk-in freezers to Inuit. But truisms. Rules of thumb, meant generally about a class of people or things, or abstractions like love, life, music, art, business, etc.
That’s *under-*used? I think it should be forced into retirement. And those bespectacled young ladies should be sent my way stat.
You know how “tight” meant “cool” up to about 4 years ago? (Maybe you didn’t. I wouldn’t blame you.) One of my old high school classmates used to say “tight like prom night” instead.
“Boar hog” just sounds redundant to me. I’ve also heard it as “tits on a bull.”
Not sure if these are exactly what the OP was looking for, but when my father was thirsty (usually at the end of the workday when it was time for a beer) he’d say:
I’m drier than a cork leg. (Which for the longest time I heard as “corked lake” and couldn’t make sense of)
or
I’m drier than a popcorn fart!