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?

NRTT.

Americans saying "I could care less", and not "I couldn't care less". If you could care less, then it's of some remote importance. If you couldn't, then surely that is the pithy put-down you'd after to show total ambivalence about whatever it is

One that is so often used wrongly on here is 'free rein', not 'free reign' as I often see. Free rein is giving your horse his head to take his own route. Free reign though is nonsensical.
Apparently to 'drop off' as in go to sleep, refers to the days of coaching when the cheap seats were actually on the roof of the coach, and cheapest of all the outer seats. If you fell asleep you were very likely to, well, drop off the coach.
There's an old joke when someone who had made some very bad business decisions and lost all his money/sacked all his staff, was asked how he slept at night with all his worries. "Oh, no, I sleep like a baby, you know, sleep for an hour, cry for an hour, sleep for an hour, all night".

I’ll swing for you....

I’ll kill you, be hanged and my dead body will swing on the gibbet.

I think the arm taking a swing for a punch comes from misunderstanding the phrase

@Aquifolium

I’ll swing for you....

I’ll kill you, be hanged and my dead body will swing on the gibbet.

I think the arm taking a swing for a punch comes from misunderstanding the phrase

Thank you!

The altering of "couldn't care less" to "could care less" is jaw-droppingly dumb.

The scary threat often made to children:

"I won't tell you again!!!"

Have any children called their parent's bluff on this, with childish literalism, when another day they've committed the same misdeed which led to this phrase? "But mummy, you said you wouldn't tell me again..."

Yes I’ve never understood “I won’t tell you again!” OK then, don’t!

I suppose it originally meant next time I won’t tell you, i’ll whack you round the head or whatever.

Life as a bed of roses refers to rose petals on a bed not actual roses with thorns.

Please someone explain "Going down like a lead balloon", meaning something not going down well. It seems to mean the opposite of what's likely to happen.

Balloons aren’t supposed to go down - so happy floating - so a lead ballon is bad

Hmm, I get what you're saying @GreenTulips but the expression isn't "going down, like a lead balloon". It's "going down like a lead balloon" - i.e. going down in the manner of a lead balloon, which suggests a quick and effective descent.

Well I say going down like a turd in a swimming pool, so I assume those kind of phrases "going down like" play on physically moving downwards and the colloquial "going down" as in "was received"

Well I say going down like a turd in a swimming pool

Going down like a rat sandwich is my simile of choice.

🤢😆

I'm never entirely sure why brushes (or indeed ha'porths) are supposed to be daft (or, for southern husband, why sausages are especially silly)

As welcome as a fart in a lift makes perfect sense, though.

I wonder if Chinny Reckon has made it into Brewers yet?