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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2009 17:33:18 GMT
My stepfather had one which remained mysterious to me until the day he died.
"Hot as a popcorn poot"
Popcorn has never done that to me.
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Post by Kim B on Sept 27, 2009 17:42:46 GMT
Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!
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Post by BigIain on Oct 1, 2009 0:36:11 GMT
"Like a rat up a drainpipe" to describe someone who immediately takes an opportunity: "If there is cheap red wine on offer, Big Iain will be there like a rat up a drainpipe!"
"like a whore's knickers" for any description of a thing going up and down rapidly.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 1, 2009 0:38:22 GMT
Oh, you colorful Scots! I never heard either of those before. ;D
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Post by BigIain on Oct 1, 2009 0:41:00 GMT
Oh and I forgot the weather ones:
It's colder than a whore's heart outside!
It's stair rods meaning very very heavy rain
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 1, 2009 0:45:39 GMT
Those are wonderful.
I'm forced to include one my cousin quoted every chance he got. He learned it as a teen, in deepest rural Mississippi, watching a man try to loosen a piston on an engine ~~
Q: "Is it stiff?''
A: "Stiffer'n a weddin' prick!"
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Post by BigIain on Oct 1, 2009 0:46:43 GMT
A quirk of the Highland/Island Scottish dialect is when asking favours from people.
Instead of "Can you make me a cup of tea?" They/we say "Would you have made me a cup of tea?"
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Post by BigIain on Oct 1, 2009 0:48:10 GMT
nice one Bixa!!!
The more polite Scots would say that something was going up and down "like a bride's nightie" which has always made me laugh.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2009 3:17:56 GMT
"like a bride's nightie". That's a good one. Have to remember that!
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Post by BigIain on Oct 1, 2009 18:22:27 GMT
It dawned on me that I forgot the obvious one. The one which causes more scratching of heads when I am not in Scotland than any other.
shopping for one item: I am going shopping shopping for more than one item: I am going to do the messages!
Its a fantastic pure colloquialism from Edinburgh!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2009 20:14:39 GMT
In my grandparents' village, there was an expression that was used when it was raining cats and dogs.
People would say "ça tombe comme à Gravelotte" ("it's falling like in Gravelotte"). This was an extraordinary expression to me because Gravelotte was a village only about 10 km away and we passed through it all the time. Even very young, I understood the expression, though. Gravelotte had a war museum from the war of 1870, because one of the most terrible battles of that war took place there. The Prussians had 5,300 dead and 14,500 wounded in that battle, and the French had 1,200 dead, 4,420 missing in action and 6,700 wounded. But the French lost the battle, and it was the turning point of the war, when France lost Alsace and part of Lorraine until 1918. Except for being rebuilt from the ruins, Gravelotte has not changed much, because the population was 669 in 1872 just after the war and 687 in 2006.
Back then, I thought it was just a local expression, but actually it is still used (not very often) everywhere in France. In any case, it is still an expression that everybody understands if you say it.
The more common expression now for a heavy rain in France is "it's falling ropes" (ça tombe des cordes) due to the visual streaks of the rain.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2009 20:15:50 GMT
I should also mention that the name "Gravelotte" has always struck me as being incredibly appropriate for a place where so many people died.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2009 22:37:42 GMT
It dawned on me that I forgot the obvious one. The one which causes more scratching of heads when I am not in Scotland than any other. shopping for one item: I am going shopping shopping for more than one item: I am going to do the messages! Its a fantastic pure colloquialism from Edinburgh! A New Orleans version is: "makin' groceries"
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 1, 2009 23:23:33 GMT
"making groceries", "saving the laundry", etc. are French constructions rendered into English.
"Do the messages" is completely mysterious to me, as is the strange polite way of asking for tea. This is something I think I remember from Enid Blyton books -- do Scots refer to porridge as "they", rather than "it".
The Gravelotte story is sad, but it brings me to another point about colloquialisms ......... how does slang mutate into colloquialism, if it indeed does?
I sometimes come out with stuff my parents used and certainly know what the phrases of that generation mean. Do some things just stick, and keep getting used generation after generation until they're a part of folk language?
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Post by BigIain on Oct 2, 2009 7:34:54 GMT
Don't know about the porridge thing Bixa. But then again, I am a lowlander! My paternal grandparents were both Islanders and there are so many things they used to say that puzzled me when I was a kid. My sis now lives in Aberdeen where they have a fantastic accent and almost an entirely colloquial language. Even I can struggle with older Aberdonians accents!
Love the thought of "makin' the groceries this morning!"
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Post by bazfaz on Oct 2, 2009 17:18:06 GMT
My father's mother came from Lancashire and had some strange expressions. "Ï don't boil my cabbages twice" = I won't repeat what I have just said. Something else she said used to worry me mightily. "You've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die." I envisaged myself having to force earth down my throat.
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Post by BigIain on Oct 13, 2009 21:52:53 GMT
"ploutering" : to paddle through puddles like children do
"Havering": Talking nonsense
"Glaekit": confused/daft
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Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2009 22:11:56 GMT
That reminds me of "patrouiller" in French, which officially means "to patrol" but which also refers to the antics of children in a gutter of running water.
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Post by BigIain on Nov 29, 2009 21:32:09 GMT
"soapdodger"... any Scots person born outside Edinburgh city limits
"pailmerk" a citizen of Galashiels (because they were the last city in Scotland to have running water and sewers). derived from the mark of the toilet pail (steel bucket).
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 21:47:16 GMT
You Scots are cruel to each other!
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Post by BigIain on Dec 5, 2009 7:39:30 GMT
you should hear what we say about outsiders, Kerouac!!! For some reason Scotland and France have always got along well (thanks to both hating England for 600 years?) so there are not too many expressions for French.
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Post by patricklondon on Dec 5, 2009 18:22:52 GMT
It is, of course, a longstanding English joke is that Scots people often welcome you with the question "You'll have had your tea?"
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Post by existentialcrisis on Dec 10, 2009 10:01:40 GMT
Can anyone shed some light on why English people refer to the French as "frogs"? This has always eluded me...
Also, I find the "broken record" colloquialism interesting. My mother always used to say this to me in my childhood, and my dad and I would often play with his vinyl collection, but as the youngest (?I think?) member of AnyPort I'd like to speculate on how this expression may be taken by younger generations. First of all, saying "scratched record" makes me think not of a skipping record, but rather a DJ making that well known scratching noise in a musical way. The concept of a "broken record", in the sense of a skipping record, ought not to lose it's relevance to younger audiences due to the popularity of DJing. However, if the word "record" was largely forgotten in this sense, I suspect the expression would create confusion, as people would wonder how something can sound like a broken record (i.e. olympic record, etc.)
This connects to the concept of the dead metaphor I discussed in a similarly themed thread. The expression may still be used to vaguely mean something, but the original image/idea is lost ... essentially rendering the expression useless.
I don't think this can happen to non-metaphorical expressions? I love that one: "Gone pecan". That's great! But I can't imagine that it ever referred to something in a metaphorical sense.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2009 16:34:13 GMT
"Like white on rice".;term for someone who globs on to you .Has GOT to be Southern(U.S.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 10, 2009 16:48:04 GMT
If that isn't, surely "like gravy on rice" is. I just posted a colloquialism in your manhole cover thread on Image Bank.
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Post by imec on Dec 10, 2009 16:56:21 GMT
Not sure if this one is only Canadian. Let me clear up a difference in one of the words though first. In the U.S., "pissed" generally means angry, whereas in Canada, we used the term to describe someone who's drunk (for angry, we say "pissed off").
We sometimes call someone who is VERY drunk "pissed as a newt".
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2009 22:52:14 GMT
In France, there is constantly changing slang to designate the police. What is really odd is that one of the most common words used by the young now is "schmitt" -- the origin of this is "German name = Gestapo" -- and yet most of the young have no knowledge of the past. They don't even know why they are saying it.
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Post by existentialcrisis on Dec 11, 2009 14:17:34 GMT
Have to disagree again Imec! While "pissed off" is more commonly used, "pissed" still means angry to me. The first time I heard it used to mean "drunk" was when I was watching a British film... I was so confused at first.
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Post by imec on Dec 14, 2009 23:02:30 GMT
Have to disagree again Imec! While "pissed off" is more commonly used, "pissed" still means angry to me. The first time I heard it used to mean "drunk" was when I was watching a British film... I was so confused at first. Probably a generation gap thing.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2009 1:47:03 GMT
I've always thought it was a purely British expression as well. May be generational too. Interesting if so...
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