Sitting here like Piffy on a rock bun....

[Greensleeves]

One of my DC is fascinated by weird and inexplicable English idioms - the one in the title being our current favourite example! Also love "looking like the wreck of the Hesperus". Could anyone indulge me with other bizarre and colourful idioms, regional or otherwise?

Little pitchers have big ears

It would freeze the balls off a brass monkey

Very regional “ you weren’t made at Pillks”
Said in my glass making home town to anyone stood in front of the TV, or otherwise blocking a view, and referring to Pilkington's Glass, a major employer in the area.

Jack Frost has got his boots on

re thunder and lightning storms, from a nanny who lived in East London through the Blitz and was always terrified of storms from then on.

Are you talking to me or chewing a brick?

What are you doing dad? Milking chickens.

I don't feel well. Oh you've just got cobblamawbers.

Just reminded me of another one my mum used to say
'what's that?'
'its a wimwam for ducks to peak (pronounced pee-erk)on!'

My husband's uncle used to tell us that we were 'standing around like spares at a wedding' 😂

Couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.

A doll, a drum a kick in the bum
and a chase around the table - this was the answer to 'what's for pudding' when there wasn't any.

Sweet Fanny Adams.

Shit in one hand and wish in the other, see which gets full first (when asking for something)

"Yer coat's on a shoogly peg, pet" - when I was pushing my luck and about to get told off.

Enough (blue in the sky) to make a pair of trousers for a sailor.

All shipshape and Bristol fashion.

I’d never heard of ‘Looking black over Bill’s mother’s’ until reading it on here some time ago, but have since read that it originated not far from Stratford on Avon - so meaning ‘over Bill (William) Shakespeare’s mother’s house’.

Lovely theory, but how true I have no idea.

Also "yer bum's out the windae" - you're talking utter rubbish!

GoingOnce · Today 19:27

Piffy on a rock bun here too! Never heard anyone say it apart from my DM…. are you my DB OP?
Me too, my DH is as local as me but he'd never heard of it. I wonder what it's origins are.

He / she looks like a right morkin. (Always understood that to mean dishevelled). He doesn't earn a fat hatch - ie not much money. Parents lived in the West mids. Mum also used to describe things as 'graunchy' which I think meant tough/chewy.

Coming with one hand as long as the other, meaning to visit someone without bringing something to eat like cake or biscuits!

The wimwam ones are interesting, our version was:
A wimwam for a mustard pot.

@Greensleeves your DC needs Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - it’s a whole massive reference book full of this stuff, plus interesting words, stories, origins etc. It’s brilliant, you can lose yourself in it!

www.amazon.co.uk/Brewers-Dictionary-Phrase-Fable-20th/dp/1473676363

Take ya coat off or you'll not feel the benefit

Face like a bulldog pissing on a nettle

Face like a bad knee

So many of those already said, plus my mother used to say: Eyes like pee holes in the snow.

'You look like Orphan Annie'. For the whole of my childhood and teens I thought my mum was saying "orpha nanny" and I had no idea what she was going on about until I had a light bulb moment.

See also 'dragged through a hedge backwards'.

I'll have your guts for garters

Hold your horses

What's for dinner? Jump up kitchen door and a bite off t'latch

Also fond memories of being very little. My grandad stands up from the dinner table and announces he's 'spend a penny'. Us kids took that to mean he was going to the paper shop for sweets and practically dragged him there.

'Going to spend a penny'*

We had the price of turnips 😆