Phrases and sayings you just don't understand

[Remieatscake]

Such as:

'Life isn't a bed of roses you know''
Well, yes I think it is really because roses have thorns - the tough bits of life but they also have the beautiful petals of the flower - the good parts of life...overly simplistic but you get my drift.....

''Oh, I slept like a baby'' - surely this is meant to mean I slept badly but people seem to say it wen they have slept well. Not a mum (yet) but I am an overnight nanny amongst other things so know that babies do not generally sleep well!

Will think of some more I'm sure but in the mean time anyone else think of sayings that don't really make sense?

You wouldn't jump in my grave so fast!
Well, no- I don't want a grave, just a seat, thanks.

Tothappy- makes perfect sense! I didn't think of it that way.

The one phrase that leaves me scratching my pole is "Shit eating grin". Why on earth would someone eating shit be grinning?

Maybe it refers to a grimace?

Or a rueful smile?

You know that fixed rictus grin? I imagine that's the face you might have if you'd just accidentally copped a forkful of shit. You don't want to swallow it, you don't want to spit in case it TOUCHES MORE OF YOUR MOUTH!!

My dad used to play a game with us, 'complete the following phrase or saying..' and then he'd say one and we had to say the end. I love them!
One of his is 'I thought twas you, now I see t'idnt'. I think it's just regional, just a silly, light-hearted way of greeting something.

Also, 'whats that got to do with the price of beef?'

And the opposite of 'cheap at twice the price', 'dear at half the price'. But why does 'dear' mean expensive?

Happy as Larry!

1. Why is Larry so happy
2. WTF is Larry anyway?

These confuse my DW tho I know exactly what they mean:
Happy as a wee dead bird
Do you think I came up the Lagan in a bubble?

Madhairday , 'all round the Wrekin' , Is it possible that they are saying 'all round the recy' as in short for recreation ground ( field/ playground ) ? so instead of walking in a straight line from A to B they walked the all the way round the recy.

I would also like to know who Soft Micky is.
Why do we think all brushes are daft,
We should not tar all brushes with the same brush ,
Why do we not want to tar everyone / thing with the same brush. surly if you are going to get tarred ( form of punishment )it would not matter if someone in line before you had been tarred with the same brush as they were going to use on you .

Madhairday , 'all round the Wrekin' , Is it possible that they are saying 'all round the recy' as in short for recreation ground ( field/ playground

This is a Midlands expression. The Wrekin hills are on Shropshire and to go all round the Wrekin is to make a torturous or lengthy journey for no reward. As in 'i went into Birmingham for the shops today and i went all round the wrekin looking for a plain black v neck jumper that suited me and couldn't find one'.

📣📣📣PLEASE someone explain how and why old ladies would poke a hole in an egg to suck it out? Would they be sucking raw egg through a hole and WTF would they do that??

If egg was boiled they could eat suck in out unless it wS soft boiled but again why not just use a teaspoon like everyone else

PLEASE explain this to me as it is really bugging me!!!!!

@Lilifer

It's possibly to do with an old hobby of collecting and displaying birds eggs

This link has a bit of info :)
newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.usage.english/2006-04/msg00681.html

Thank you 00100001 that explains it a bit I suppose but it's still a really weird phrase and the thing is that people use it without having a clue what the original meaning of it was😏

Forget who asked, but a round of sandwiches means a sandwich made with 2 slices of a normal sized loaf.

I found out last year the origin of 'being left on the shelf', i e.a woman remaining unmarried.

We visited a mediaeval NT property in Tintagel, where part way up the stairs was a large wooden platform (the shelf).

It was explained that back in the very olden days it was where unmarried girls and young women would sleep together, where (supposedly) they'd be safe from unwanted attentions by randy blokes who'd had too much ale.

As someone with severe insomnia due to mh issues it certainly feels darkest just before dawn - both "spiritually" and physically - coldest part of the day too, I hate it.

Laughing on the other side of his face - I'm familiar with and understand but can't find the origin.

Hind legs off a donkey (often said of me 😂) - pleased as a Scot to learn it has Gaelic roots and means boring a donkey so much they'll sit (which they tend to not like doing)

Girlraisedinthesouth - it's both isn't it? A friend (when you're) in need is a friend in deed (their actions prove their friendship)

The devil is in the detail was originally God is in the details - meaning to find the truth (God is the truth in the bible) you must be thorough.

Kick into touch - relates to rugby, I think (not a sports fan ex was) that kicking the ball "into touch" kept it in your teams possession but is a slightly sacrificial move in that it stalls the game and so is only done if you've no other choice.

Re sucking eggs, best I can find is that poor people stealing eggs quickly poked a hole in and sucked them before getting caught so as to get the nutrition quickly before they were taken back off them. But the egg collecting version (where collectors would want the shells left relatively intact to display) also makes sense.

Sucking an egg is the most efficient way of eating them raw, no washing-up. In French we say gober un œuf, but there is nothing about grandmothers

all round the Wrekin

Wrekin is a brummy word, usually for the wreck - a piece of abindined land or land used for landfill and no good for a park or building on etc

To walk round the wrekin is to go all the way round and not over in a straight line -

TotHappy

dear is a word of Germanic origin that means expensive. The word is teuer in modern German, and is a perfectly standard word in German.

My mother, who is in her 80s, often uses dear to mean expensive.

I am from Essex
There are some very annoying slang terms that irritate me

Mugging me off
Mugging him off
Doesn’t make sense to me. Being a mug yes. Getting mugged. But mugging OFF is annoying

Give me the hump
Where does that come from? Who wants a hump?

Jump the train
As if you are going to literally jump over it

I like ‘my old mucker’ Though because it’s a nice term relating to someone you really value as a mate and has ‘mucked in’ or you worked together

Dear=expensive is perfectly normal usage to me. Dear=darling is a totally different word, they are just homophones (might have a common origin but if I say something’s a bit dear I don’t in any way mean it is close to my heart).

The Wrekin is a hill not a pile of junk if you go round the Wrekin you take the long way round.

Fascinating thread! I've just scanned through it to try to make sure my query hadn't already been done to death (although I could have missed it; apologies if so) but plan to read it properly later.

The one I wonder about is "I'll swing for you". I've seen it used to mean both "I'm so annoyed with you that I'll kill you and hang for it" and "I'm so annoyed with you that I'll swing a punch at you". Maybe they're both right?

And wtaf is 'baited breath '??
I'm imagining a fish dangling from your nose

Proof that spelling DOES matter

Oh dear. Reminded of a really childish joke:

The cat ate some cheese then sat outside the mousehole with baited breath.

I'll get my coat...

My mother, who is in her 80s, often uses dear to mean expensive

Are you English? Everyone knows dear means expensive, it's not an old fashioned useage of the word, I'm very surprised that anyone English doesn't know that.

Dear is absolutely ‘expensive’ !

Crumbs, i agree, dear = expensive and everyone knows it! I agree, I use it too, I just didn't know why!

Thanks for the Teutonic explanation

For whoever asked about how many beans make 5, as any fule kno, the answer is "a bean, a bean, a half a bean, a bean and a half and a bean."

I think of it as being said admiringly of someone who knows what's what.