Funny Sayings

[Mudisox]

"If you see a crow in crowd it's a rook. If you see a rook on its own it's a crow" is a common expression for distinguishing between them ( but they look pretty different anyway)

A headline in our local paper some years ago read " Sheep attacks rocket"

I hate to spoil the fun but we have a field with some pigs in close by, and the food and warmth of the animals and pig**** has attracted loads of crows.
I know,and can prove it- I shot some this morning and can definitely state that they are crows. Didn't stop the problem however.

 

[rudolph_hart]

exasperate the situation
ad finitum
Na'war Amin (who's he?)
a criteria
warrantee

Kid speak.
e.g.1: goes = says. "So 'e goes 'wern't me, mate'".
e.g.2: I'm like = I say. "So I'm like, woss your problem then?"
e.g.3: I'm like = I'm thinking. "So I'm like, woss 'er problem then?"
e.g.4: So, pronounced sye (a la Neighbours/Home & Away). "Sye? Your point is?"

 

[25931]

syntax

It's not syntax, it's grammar. It is certainly common idiomatic usage (and therefore, some would say, correct) and is probably an example of the optative mood having been subsumed by the subjunctive. This is probably also the explanation for "We would like to welcome you on board" which annoyed Pugwash and Mash. If you really want to know more, look up subjunctive and optative in Wikipedia.

What really annoys me is the increasingly common use of "may" instead of "might" in counterfactual conditionals.

Is syntax what prostitutes (or their clients) would pay if they were legal ?

 

[Liverboard]

'Drop dead gorgeous'



'That ........ was something to die for'



Ever since my Dad told me the Queen likes plums

the National Anthem has never been the same (send her victorious)

 

[cliffordpope]

Or my pet hate "almost" unique.

Unique means there is only one of something. If something is very rare, so rare that you have never come across another example, you might well start to think that it was unique.
If someone then points out that actually there is another example, but it's been hidden in a barn in Patagonia for the last 50 years, you could correctly say that your first example was "almost unique".

The expression is just as correct as saying something is "almost the only one left" or "almost extinct".

 

[prv]

If someone then points out that actually there is another example, but it's been hidden in a barn in Patagonia for the last 50 years, you could correctly say that your first example was "almost unique".

Yep. It's "very unique" that normally gets people aerated.

Pete

 

[Oceanis]

Lovely expression from Wales "I'll do it now in a minute".

All of a sudden.

 

[Grumpybear]

What about the weather people.

"as the rain sinks its way south...."

And

"the low cloud will be reticent to lift" - whatever happened to reluctant?

Or

"organised bands of rain" - seen a disorganised one recently?

my all-time favourite, heard a few months ago, is

"as we begin to go throughout the rest of the early part of the evening"

And so many more....

 

[Tiddy Oggy]

Been there, done that

One of my Welsh relatives is reputed to have called to her errant young son:

" come by here from over there

we don't want to take you home lost"

I once asked a maid in a large Welsh home where she was going and she replied:

"Oh, 'tis been that I have where I was going; 'tis coming back that I am now."

 

[BrendanS]

That's because Welsh, like other languages (and English is not the only language spoken in the UK) has a different grammatical structure. So when people translate, or use local idioms, they use that structure. Very natural for welsh speakers, or even English speaking people in some parts of Wales, and very funny for English speakers I'm sure

 

[Bosun Higgs]

On more than one occasion my mother was heard giving directions to someone to say " well if I were you I wouldnt start from here"

and " I'm not so green as cabbage looking"

The kids ( now aged 30 odd) still refer to the "furcywork"

 

[Barnacle Bill]

We used to have a code on Aztec, interchanging the phrases: 'roving fender' and 'raving bender' (not sure if this non-pc phraseology will get past the censor).

When approaching a berth we might call for a 'raving bender' to be brought to the bow or stern of the boat, and this could cause some consternation if people on other boats overheard this.

On the other hand, when indulging in that favorite sport of people watching on other boats or in the bar, we could safely conjecture whether a 'roving fender' had been spotted.

 

[pugwash60]

'at this moment in time'.

On the WOULD like to welcome you aboard thing: I don't know about the actual grammar but it just sounds wrong, I concede that; 'I'd like to welcome you aboard' would sound fine so therefore; 'I would like to welcome you aboard' could work if the emphasis was not on the would. However somewhere in the depths of time the dollies have learned to emphasise the WOULD and I think that this sounds stupid and wrong.
I may be wrong but am happy in my belief.

 

[Moodyoldman]

I saw it with my own eyes!

 

[Little Five]

My sister once told me she was ..."driving along behind the car in front of me..."

Also, when my youngest lad was 4 I was trying to explain how time was relative and so told him that if he was with someone he really loved 1 minute would pass very quickly but if tied to a boiling hot stove 1 minute would seem like a long time. He was silent for a moment then said What if you were with someone you really loved and you were both tied to a boiling hot stove.....
Aged 4 for god's sake!!!!

 

[Ron Dean]

My mother when getting over an illness would tell people she was still under fhe doctor and on a course of "anti-bionics".
When we were finishing the last of her buns or cakes she would say "That's the last one - there won't be any more, once they're all gone".
But the saying that really amused me when I was a young lad, was when my father was exasperated with my mother. He would say under his breath, "That woman - She's enough to make an angel pee down a golden trumpet".

 

[rudolph_hart]

"That woman - She's enough to make an angel pee down a golden trumpet".

Local landlord, when referring to a customer's obnoxious kids "They're enough to make a paedophile eat his own sweets!"

Though me pants would never dry!

 

[prv]

"I'm not so green as cabbage looking"

I had a mate at uni who used to say that, usually in a drunken Gloucestershire accent

The kids ( now aged 30 odd) still refer to the "furcywork"

?

Go on then, what's that?

My family didn't really go in for outlandish sayings, more my Dad's imaginative explanations for things. The GPS antenna, for instance, supposedly contained a tiny gnome with big binoculars for looking at the satellites. Put your hand over it till the GPS started beeping (lost fix) and he'd squeak a gnome-like "gerroff! get your bleedin' mitts out me way!". I would have been in my mid to late teens before we ever sailed a boat with GPS, so this wasn't just to entertain small children

The "first thing to come into his head" was always an aardvark, complete with flailing hands miming someone quite distressed at having just had a live anteater teleported into the same location as their cranium.

"Clothes airer" means that someone is telling the same story we've all heard a dozen times before.

And as mentioned elsethread, all seagulls are called George or Nigel, and sea urchins are "Spiney Normans".

Pete

 

[Elessar]

One of my Welsh relatives is reputed to have called to her errant young son:

" come by here from over there

we don't want to take you home lost"

it would have been "come by yer from over by there" if fluent in south walian

 

[Dazedkipper]

'There you go' when being handed something in a shop or a meal in a resturant....my immediate thought is 'Where do I go'? ggrrr.

'Reducing down', you can't exactly reduce up can you?

Oh and 'the car in front is a Toyota'...thank God! ROFL