Phrases which make no sense

[WhereTheFuck]

It has just occurred to me that the phrase 'one in one out' (like when you go to a club and it's really busy) doesn't make sense. It should be 'one out one in' because you don't get to go in until someone comes out.
For some reason this is now really annoying me! Does anyone else have examples of everyday phrases that actually make no sense when you think about them?

An ex manager of mine used to say "I am not as green as I am cabbage looking", and I never really understood what she meant by it. Is it the same as "I'm not as thick as I look"?

Yes

It's more naive though rather than thick.

@NEE1302

'I turned around and said' - why were you facing the other way?

'At the end of the day' - why not at the beginning or middle of the day?

The problem is you're taking them too literally. 'I turned round and said' sort of intensifies the opinion because you physically turned and said it, rather than just said it. As for the other, 'at the end of the day' is sort of a metaphor for 'when all is said and done'.

I do find it quite amusing that the reason so many people don't understand these sayings is because they aren't meant to be taken literally, they're sayings! So 'break a leg' means stop worrying and take a risk, not actually break a leg...

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor

It's more naive though rather than thick.

Yes, green is often used as a metaphor for young/naive/inexperienced rather than 'stupid'. @additionalcharacter - think of it like a green seedling that's not long emerged from the ground.

The manager was saying something akin to "I wasn't born yesterday".

Spending money like water.
WTF?
My in laws say it all the time and just look confused if I say you can't spend water.

Also my boss describes things as 'barn door obvious' and I have no idea how this is different from just 'obvious'

"Makes my teeth itch" makes no sense to me

Thanks for clarifying that for me.

@NotRainingToday

Spending money like water. WTF? My in laws say it all the time and just look confused if I say you can't spend water.

I suppose it's meant to evoke water gushing from a tap? Like a large volume of water.

@BippityBoppity87

"Makes my teeth itch" makes no sense to me

Teeth don't itch, so something that is so horrid it can do the impossible makes the metaphor.

See: my eyes started from my head. No they didn't.

The exception that proves the rule… 🤔

To prove = to TEST. 'Does the rule hold good even in the case of this odd/improbable circumstance?'
cf: hard cases make bad law.

The saying is cheap at twice the price
That's what I've always heard. Never heard cheap at twice the price.

I meant, of course, never heard 'cheap at half the price'

I don’t understand ‘near miss’ when you did miss eg colliding with something but very nearly hit it

In my understanding it means similar to 'close shave' . It was a miss, but near enough a hit to be uncomfortable.

“Every little helps”. Every little what? Little is an adjective, where’s the noun? Always mystified me when I lived in England (am Australian).

@PuppyMonkey

I’m surprised this hasn’t turned into yet another thread about daft people who really believe it’s “if you think that, you’ve got another THING coming” rather than THINK coming.

• runs off to leave everyone debating this until next week.

There was an entire thread about that expression once, with half the posters insisting it was "thing".

@Babyroobs

someone just posted on my fb that their daughter was doing a dance show for the first time in 18 months and said the phrase " break a leg ". Just why ? If she breaks a leg she may not be able to dance for another 18 months. I don't understand that saying !!

If you break a leg you are in a cast, ie you got the gig.

The exception that proves the rule…

What @goodwinter said, but here's an example

Think about this, you see a sign that says, "No parking, except on Sunday" the rule is "no parking" the exception is "except on Sunday"

The phrase "butter wouldn't melt" to describe someone being warm and sweet drives me nuts because I don't get it at all!

The phrase is , "Looked so innocent butter wouldn't melt in his/her mouth"

Lots of phrases seem to havr lost half of the phrase and changes the meaning or removes it.

Eg warm your cockles - nope it's warm the cockles of your heart (cockles being the ventricles)

The proof is in the pudding, nope "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"

a few ad apples - this makes me actually angry when it's is something like police corruption or a political party, the full saying is, "One bad apple will spoil the whole barrel" Which is literally what happens if you put a bad /spoiled apple with fresh apples they will all rot.

As a phrase it means that one corrupt person in an organisation will corrupt the whole thing.

[quote CaptainMyCaptain]One phrase which annoys me and has been used wrongly since the 70s is 'winter of discontent'. It is a quote from Richard III and means practically the opposite to the way it is used.

writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/the-winter-of-our-discontent[/quote]
Um, I think whoever wrote that piece hadn't read the whole play! The point of the speech is it's sarcastic - Richard III really isn't a play where the central character starts out by expressing a sincere celebration of the end of the bad times ...

I've never understood 'went down like a lead balloon' to mean something wasn't well received. Surely a lead balloon would go down well, as it's so heavy?

I dont get 'no good deed goes unpunished '

Its like you get penalised if you are a good person??

but a balloon is meant to fly high, so a lead balloon would be a dud, hardly a balloon at all.
so it is a thing that fails to achieve its purpose.
her introductory speech went down like a lead balloon.
and she didn't get selected.

i've never really understood the phrase,
to second guess.
i kind of understand it from the context, the overall meaning in a sentence, usually.
but i never heard it when i was young, so i wonder if that's why i find it a bit puzzling.
how does it differ from simply guessing ?