Can you share your pithy, old-fashioned sayings?

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

DS is 7 and has a very folkloric imagination. He is always coming out with sayings that he has invented but that sound for a sec like they might be real.

I am going to make him a list of real proverbs and sayings as I think he'd get a kick out of it.

I'm starting with "many a mickle makes a muckle".... can you help me by adding your favourites???

Mine all seem animal based...

There's more than one way to skin a cat

If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck... (Guess what)

If you hear hooves think horses not zebras.

• Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

• If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers' hands (I have no idea what this one means!).

I'd love to see what your DS has come up with himself 🙂

Your mouth is the rudder of the ship

It's black over Will's mother's (it is too)

Can't have cook for lunch and cook for tea.

You make a better door than a window.

I wants don't get.

Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt.
Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs
Waiting around like Piffy on a rock bun

"It's a bit black ower Bill's mothers" is quite a common saying when it looks like rain in the Midlands.

You are a Midlander too then? 😆

As much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Couldn't stop a pig in a doorway.

Worse things happen at sea.

“If you knew what hunger was, you would eat what you were given & be thankful for it”. My grandad, said whenever I was being a fussy eater.

Let the dog see the rabbit!

In and out like a fiddler's elbow

Like a lost duck in a thunderstorm

You smell like a pox-doctor's clerk (said by my father to my brother when he was wearing too much Lynx as a teen!)

These are great! He would particularly love Piffy.....

His own sayings include

If a duck winks, it's time to change your wellies

And

If it's seven miles to the ship, then it's seven to the storm

And

If a chicken's on a rock, it'll be in a river

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear

Fools and bairns should never see things half done

Away and boil yer heid

Lang may yer lum reek

Cut your coat according to your cloth

I have a soft spot for "like piffy on a rock bun". Used in the context of a berating a person who left you standing like an fool.....

You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink

My DM was a notorious giggler at work, and was told you'd laugh to see a pudding crawl'.

Put pig on wall to watch the band go by

Put your nose to the grindstone
You are shaped like a wooden duck
Were you born in a barn?

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride

Wouldn't touch it with a barge pole
Sounds like a glede under a door.