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Idioms and Sayings - a community thread to share to bring joy and laughter

P0w3rPlut0

I enjoy dipping into and out of chats on here, but even so find many overwhelming.  I saw a thread about idioms and sayings, but now can not find it again, so instead, maybe we can start a proper thread about these things; as its often cited that due to autistic "black and white" thinking we do not understand things like "pull your socks up"................................maybe that is why I have always been fascinated with language and cherish the book given to me by my Swedish Girlfriend.

A word in your shell-like

Unravel the meaning, origin, and usage of over 6,000 phrases from book and film titles, idioms and cliches, to nicknames, slogans and quotations with this modern and entertaining guide to wonderful phrases by one of the world's best-known wordsmiths. The ideal replacement or complement to that tatty old copy of Brewer's Phrase and Fable most of us have about the house, A Word in Your Shell-Like is an entertaining look at both familiar and unfamiliar phrases by one of the key world authorities in English language reference. The articles also contain discussion of meaning, origin and usage. Who was originally 'sold down the river'? Have you been told to 'Naff off'? Find out of whom it was said 'he couldn't chew gum and fart at the same time', who the 'catcher in the rye' was, and what it means to be 'caught between wind and water'. Few other word reference books are likely to increase your store of knowledge with such fun.

Publisher information

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007220878
Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 53 mm
Weight: 720 g

Parents

  • What about: "Knee-high to a grasshopper.?"

  • in reply to lostmyway

    one of the ones I love too, as someone taller than average.

    http://www.allaboutstuff.com/Critters/Knee_High_to_a_Grasshopper.asp this phrase is at least 200 years old, since we find a form of it in print that long ago. My guess is forms of this phrase existed long before then, and that is just the first time it was in print. “Knee high to a grasshopper” is the latest form of a Southern colloquialism using animal height as a measure of height or growth. The earliest such descriptor in print is found in 1814: “ knee-high to a toad” Later on we see references to other forms of this phrase in print, such as “knee-high to a mosquito” and even briefly “knee-high to a duck”. There are around 120, 000 varieties of grasshoppers according to this source, and to be knee-high to one would involve being between one millimeter to one inch high depending on the variety of the grasshopper.

    Website http://makingheadsortailsofidioms.com/2012/02/07/knee-high-to-a-grasshopper/ adds the phrases “knee high to a splinter”, “knee high to a bumblebee”, and “knee high to a jack rabbit” to the list of ancestors to our modern southernism “knee high to a grasshopper”. The first reference directly to “knee high to a grasshopper” in print was in the Democratic Review in 1851 where we read, “You pretend to be my daddies; some of you who are not knee-high to a grasshopper!”

Reply
  • in reply to lostmyway

    one of the ones I love too, as someone taller than average.

    http://www.allaboutstuff.com/Critters/Knee_High_to_a_Grasshopper.asp this phrase is at least 200 years old, since we find a form of it in print that long ago. My guess is forms of this phrase existed long before then, and that is just the first time it was in print. “Knee high to a grasshopper” is the latest form of a Southern colloquialism using animal height as a measure of height or growth. The earliest such descriptor in print is found in 1814: “ knee-high to a toad” Later on we see references to other forms of this phrase in print, such as “knee-high to a mosquito” and even briefly “knee-high to a duck”. There are around 120, 000 varieties of grasshoppers according to this source, and to be knee-high to one would involve being between one millimeter to one inch high depending on the variety of the grasshopper.

    Website http://makingheadsortailsofidioms.com/2012/02/07/knee-high-to-a-grasshopper/ adds the phrases “knee high to a splinter”, “knee high to a bumblebee”, and “knee high to a jack rabbit” to the list of ancestors to our modern southernism “knee high to a grasshopper”. The first reference directly to “knee high to a grasshopper” in print was in the Democratic Review in 1851 where we read, “You pretend to be my daddies; some of you who are not knee-high to a grasshopper!”

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