figure of speech
 

i was just sitting here remembering some of the hairbrained figures of speech my mother used to use. my two favorites are as follows:

"like a cow pissing on a flat rock"
this is a very specific description of a particular type of rain. if you imagine the described phenomenon, you'll probably recognize the type of rainstorm concerned.

"funnier than a rubber crutch"
the way in which this one was used led me to believe that, apparently, there is no higher form of humor than watching an invalid struggling with an undependable and dangerous substitution for valid medical equipment. it struck me as oddly cruel and bizarre as a standard of humor.

please share your colorful and/or odd figures of speech, real or imagined. in-depth analysis optional.

This one is predominantly used in New Brunswick. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it used elsewhere, but I hear tell that apparently it originated with us:

Happy as a pig in sh*t

That phrase always struck me as odd. Because as we all know, pigs like mud, because they don't have sweat glands, and mud helps them regulate their temperature on hot days. So if a pig were in mud, I"m sure he'd be quite content. But sh*t? If a pig were in sh*t, he would probably have the same reaction as any other animal short of a dung beetle or something, namely, "what the fvck am I doing in this sh*t?" I don't imagine he'd be pleased.

...but... only when he hungers... Pig's in Zen...

Anyway,

Useless as tits on a teddy bear is the characteristically somewhat cryptic favourite from my oldest bestest friend, and while I have adopted her Up and down like a whore's pants on payday as my own, I must confess my shameless theft, Twiggy.

My Dad's phrase:
his mouth walks like a duck's ass
only I can't translate it properly, because I can't find the correct verb (the Hungarian mouthwalk here denotes a mindless, annoying flow of words)

It brings back pictures of my Grandma's yard: ducklings producing liquid, foul-smelling green sh*t, happily shaking their butt after the act and walking away pretending nothing happened.

Unfortunately, it reminds me of one of my colleagues as well: she would amble in, pour on us a waterfall of malice and then walk away, leaving behind the unpleasant smell of her presence.

logorrhea

The only thing that comes to my mind now (and that always causes non-Bavarians to giggle or look a bit puzzled) is

rejoice like a schnitzel

I have no idea why of all things schnitzels are supposed to have such a bright mood :confused:

Here are a few that many of you will recognize:

Happy as a clam
Colder than a witch's tit
Honest as the day is long
Fresh as the morning dew
Soft as a baby's bottom
Hot as Hades
Naked as a jaybird
Wild as a bull in a china shop
Quick as the wind
Right as rain
Horny as a rooster
Straight as an arrow
Crooked as a dog's hind leg
Dead as a door nail

etc. etc. etc.

How about a new thread on figures of speech where one is asked to imaginatively complete a simile. Try this one: RUDE AS.....

^ rude as a mud hut.

how about like lipstick on a pig

or a recent favorite, "(staggering from man to man...) like a drunken prom queen on an uneven sidewalk"

My wife is sort-of a lapsed pagan. A few years back, when she was still a practicing Wiccan, she used to follow up that phrase with "And I should know!"

In a similar vein, my father often used the expression Colder than a mother-in-law's kiss.

my friend from swamp country, mississippi frequently declares, "i'm so hungry, i could eat a buttered brick."

another one that i'm not ashamed to have stolen is, "this ain't my first rodeo." it's used typically when someone is trying to explain something to you that you already understand. i used it the other day with my realtor when she was trying to get me to accept some sort of hogwash that the seller was trying to pass off as fair. "um, no, this ain't my first rodeo."


i think we should all vow to use one of the figures of speech from another country in every day conversation, in our own respective languages. personally, i'm going to look for an application for "his mouth walks like a duck's ass."

Likewise, I'll try to use this one "this ain't my first rodeo.". Everybody will totally believe me! They would look at me with respect, I think. I hope.

Here's another one: He shook him (up) like Christ the cobbler. It means to shake someone angrily, because that person didn't do something he should have done.
I'm familiar with most Bible stories, but I don't know what happened between Christ and the cobbler. Maybe it's in the Apocrypha... :p

iets doen voor de kat z'n kut

to do something for the cat's cvnt - to do something that has already become unneccesary or obsolete

"oh, so i've been making this report all day for the cat's cvnt??"

also, de kat z'n viool (violin/fiddle)

My Texas upbringing gave me a number of colorful phrases -

Don't pee down my leg and tell me it's raining! which is a variation of "this ain't my first rodeo." Texan ladies were not allowed to use this phrase, however.

My mother always said "You'd better not do that or I'll be mad as a wet hen." Her mother grew up on a farm, so I'm sure she got it from her. This was used almost interchangeably with mad as a red hen, but she reserved the red hen for when she was really angry, and it was usually accompanied by a spanking with a metal spatula. I'd always picture someone dumping a bucket of water on a chicken, or a white hen getting so mad that all her feathers would suddenly turn scarlet and then she'd explode.

One of my favorites as a little girl was "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas," becuase it always made my mouth water even when I was being reprimanded.

He's crazier than a three dollar bill is always apt because there is no U.S. currency of that denomination. My brother uses it a lot. He also loves to drive bargains, and when he gets a really good one he drawls "I skinned him but good," as if he had peeled the very skin from the man and left him with nothing to hold him together.

My grandmother, always concerned about bringing up my many sisters, cousins and me to be proper ladies of refinement in dresses, would hiss "Keep your knees together, I can see your A-Double-Scribble!" This was an especially mysterious phrase to hear as a kid because there was zero tolerance for off-color words, so we really just didn't know any. It wasn't until my cousin and I were adults, talking about our prim, sainted, snowy-haired, tee-totaling Southern Baptist Grannie, when we realized with a shock that for years she had been spelling out the forbidden word "ass" - a word that none of us learned or even heard until middle school.

One of my recent favorites is a variation on "it's like putting lipstick on a pig" and applies to any hopelessly ugly man-made object that can't be beautified. "It's like pinning a corsage to a robot."

Oh lord, I have a million of these that my grandmother used to say.

One of my favorites is "Well I'll swan." It's kind of like "Well I'll be." It amuses me because my devoutly religious grandmother used to say it all the time, and I read recently that it developed out of "Well I'll swear and be damned," which she would never, ever have said on purpose. :D

Down here in Tejas we say something's tumped over sometimes...It's a combination of "tip" and "dump"...you can only use it if you've knocked over a container that had something spillable in it. I say that all the time, and also, I'll admit, I frequently say that I'm fixing to do something. On the Gulf Coast, in some areas, that's shortened to "I/I'm funna..."

And I absolutely love to use You can't swing a dead cat in here without hittin' a... whatever there is a lot of. My favorite was when I was involuntarily sent to a lawyer gathering and I got to say, "Dadgummit, you can't swing a dead cat in here without hittin' a Republican."

My dad has a lot of good ones, too, frequently dumb as a post and ugly as three kinds of sin .

my father had a commentary on ugliness, that for some reason he tended to reserve for a description of lionel richie, specifically. don't ask me why. The expression was, "he's so ugly he could make a train go down a dirt road." it's pretty self explanatory.

and the a-double-scribble thing reminded me of something one of our neighbors used to say. she loathed profanity so whenever something went wrong she would instead blurt out, "oh, sugar honey iced tea!" it was years before we figured out that she was cursing in her own cute way.