Idioms, slang, memes, and weird turns of phrase

i really like thinking about weird variations in language, so I thought it would be fun to create a thread about it. It's also totally not a study resource on language or anything.

Here in Brazil we got a couple weird ones. "Throw [pronoun] against a wall and call [] gecko" is a weird one from a humor tv show, I think, that got weirdly memetic. It's related to sexual domination of sorts - "she's so hot I'd let her throw me against a wall and call me a gecko", sort of like the "she could step on me", I guess.
There's also "call me google and I'll give you anything you're looking for", which is an even more ridiculous version of the first.

As a serious verb, we have "to lizard" - sleep/lay down in the sun when it's cold.

 

Expression of Southern Astonishment that I absolutely adore, as croaked out by a tiny old man:

"Well, shit fire and save the matches!"

 

A weird one I never understood but the older generations often said after, well, everything they want to feel superior about is, "rice is to Asians what blood is to the human body!"

I think (don't quote me on this) that it's supposed to mean, It is what it is? One time I couldn't stop myself and replied, "You're diabetic, gramps." D:

 

to @Wiwaxia's eternal amusement, here in germany we have the term "dreikäsehoch" which roughly translates to "three cheese tall", meaning a small child

and of course theres the ever-classic:

• "ich versteh nur bahnhof" - "i only understand train station" meaning "i understand jack shit"
• "umgekehrt wird n schuh draus" - "if you turn it around it becomes a shoe", which apparently has the cultural equivalent "youve got the cart before the horse"
• "besser arm dran als arm ab" which is also a pun, literally "better poor than missing an arm", meaning "could be worse"
• "da liegt der hase im pfeffer", lit "thats where the hare is lying in the pepper"; as well as "das ist des pudels kern", lit "thats the core of the poodle" (latter from goethes faust), both meaning "this is the core of the issue"
• "den wald vor lauter bäumen nicht sehen", lit "not being able to see the forest because of all the trees", meaning "getting lost in details and missing the greater picture"
• "einbildung ist auch eine bildung", lit "conceit is a form of education as well" (its a pun), meaning "conceit knows no bounds"
• "eine kuh macht muh, viele kühe machen mühe", literally "one cow moos, many cows take effort", meaning something along the lines of putting too much on your plate, undererstimating the amount of work for something
• (jegus theres a lot of puns in my favourite sayings)
• "alles hat ein ende, nur die wurst hat zwei", lit "everything has an end, only a sausage has two", meaning "it will go over"
• "etwas brennt mir auf den nägeln", lit "theres something is burning on my nails", meaning "theres something i really need to say/do"
• "gott sprach, es werde licht, doch petrus fand den schalter nicht" lit "god said, let there be light, but petrus couldnt find the switch", which probably (!) roughly translates to "something went wrong"
• "jeder mensch hat ein laster, lkw-fahrer haben zwei", lit "every person has a vice, truck drivers have two", based on the double meaning of "laster", which can be translated both to "vice" and "truck". meaning: "every person has vices", "stop beating yourself up over not being perfect"
• "du hast auch nur einen kopf, damit es dir nicht in den hals regnet", lit "you only have a head so it doesnt rain into your neck", meaning "that was fucking stupid"
• "mit der/dem ist nicht gut kirschen essen" lit "eating cherries isnt fun with that person", meaning a vindictive, nasty person, someone you shouldnt cross
• "der schnee von gestern ist der matsch von morgen", lit "yesterdays snow is tomorrows sludge", meaning "it might be over but we still gotta deal with it". the term "schnee von gestern", "yesterdays snow", means "done and over with", "forgiven", "forgotten"
• "das ist doch für die katz", lit "thats for the cat", meaning "this is useless"

 

A Southern friend of mine says "I'm as happy as a skunk eating bumblebees," which apparently means very happy with a hint of smugness, although I can't imagine eating bees would be comfortable even for a skunk!

 

My family tends to develop sort of... Family memes? Both out of 'fandom' things we like (in scare quotes because the previous generation doesn't exactly Fandom but they still do the Fandom meme thing) and out of our own weirdness. Some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head:

• Calling the weird light bulb in our new bedroom ceiling fixture "THE CLAAAAAW" complete with pointing dramatically.
• "Slaying the ceiling demon" - turning off an overhead light, usually one that's too bright/irritating at the moment
• "Grant me power from the wall gods" and "pls help w/snakes" are both ways we request help with plugging in charging cords.

I know there are more, but I just woke up and am still typing on mobile. >.<

 

One of my favorite phrases in Appalachia/The South is "uglier than a fence post dabbed over with toad frogs" meaning "really ugly". Some other gems are

• "All over hell and half of Georgia," meaning "all over the place". Usually in reference to a person who's always running around doing useless shit or looking for something.
• "He wouldn't holler suey if the hogs had him down" meaning, "he's an exceptionally lazy person"
• "Meaner than a striped snake" meaning "very mean"
• A "cathead" is the large biscuit made from wadding up all the leftover biscuit dough
• "Just slap some gravy on it" meaning roughly, "cover up a poor job with something else". This one is specific to my area due a recent incident involving 6-year-old pork being served to kintergardeners in one of the county schools, and the cafeteria workers putting gravy on it to mask the stench. It's definitely a local meme.

 

Some favoerite Brazilian expressions:

• "You can get your horsie out of the rain" - For when somebody has an expectation that Ain't Gonna Happen, and especially if you're pissed at them and telling them to quit it. Example: "If he thinks I'm ever going to go out with him, he can get his little horsie out of the rain".
• "Filling the sausage" [verb] or "sausage-filling" [noun] - Stalling to get to the core of the issue, pretending you have more to say than you do, bullshitting it. Example: "most of this paper is just me filling the sausage, like, pages 3 to 5 are pure sausage-filling"
• "The caviar left" - right wing conservatives often accuse young leftists of being this, the implication being you're sheltered and spoiled for all that you preach, say, communism, you actually don't know what you're talking about because you're well-off.
• "The bread that the devil has kneaded" - Suffering, especially related to poverty. Example: "after her husband left her and she lost her job she was eating the bread that the devil has kneaded".
• "The berries fell out of my pocket" - it's actually "the butiás", butiá being a kind of berry, but anyway, it means being shocked and surprised, often a bit comically.
• "Elbow pain" - the wangst that you get after being romantically rejected, especially if it's pathethic and melodramatic. Example: "He won't shut up about how all people are rotten but it's just because he's got a lot of elbow pain after his boyfriend left him"
• "Owl [relative]" - a relative who dotes on you and thinks you're awesome and is proud of you. I, for example, often describe myself as my brother's "Owl sibling"

 

In Corsican, "go fuck yourself" is "Vai à fatti leghje", which literally means "Go get read", a more accurate translation being "Go get an exorcism."

Edit: And I think that's beautiful.

 

It amuses me that if something IS shit, it's bad, and if it AIN'T shit, it's bad, but if it's THE shit, it's good. ENGLISH!

 

@whimsicalobservant what is lkw? something-something-wagen?

 

lastkraftwagen, aka truck, meaning the big kind of truck.
sometimes abbreviated to "laster"
"lkw-fahrer" means a person who drives one of those.

 

Souls community has a lot of weird little phrases it likes to parrot out to one another. A lot of them. My favorite is the grammatically fucked "tongue, but hole".

 

a few things off the top of my head:

• my grandma has been known to say "i'm so mad i could spit tacks" which means very very angry
• my friend from georgia would often say "pop a squat" for sit down and get comfortable
• my family says "sugar honey iced tea!" occasionally in place of exclaiming "shit!"
• there's also "cheese n' crust!" instead of "jesus christ!"
• my sister and i often say "peppa oh" as in the way peppa says oh when she's disappointed, but instead of copying the sound we say her name and then oh regularly
• i dunno if this counts but we quote spongebob a LOT

 

Grandpa is a source of many things that are foul. Things such as "hotter than a whore house on nickle day", "hotter than a witch's tit in a blast furnace", "colder than a witch's tit (in a deep freeze)", and "hotter than a freshly fucked fox in a forest fire" are how we describe temperature in my home. If you ask for someone and he doesn't know the answer is "went to shit and the hogs ate them". There are meals with foul names like "shit on a shingle" too!

 

Some expressions specific to my family:

• "The picture of pain without a frame" - mom and I use this to indicate lametable or pathethic bullshit, esp. if it happens to us (like "Got a 12 hour workday ahead and will have to pay bills during lunch break, the picture of pain without a frame")
• "Makes me want to bash him upside the head with a dead cat until it meows" - mom and I use this one to indicate that someone is being very stupid
• "Hey Santos, what... the... fuck is this, Santos" (this is an inside joke related to a story dad tells from when he was in the Air Force, but it became a family meme)
• "From here... [gestures to immediately in front of self] to there... [points to the horizon] EVERYBODY gets a beating"

 

my friend group has bunch of extremely specific memes from a batshit insane optimized dnd game
particularly useful ones are:
"HOW DARE YOU CHALLENGE MY (insert insulting description here) GIRL/BOYFRIEND TO BASKETBALL?"
and
"(X), your girlfriend scares me."
"Scares me too, buddy."

 

Oh hai there familiar idioms! Hilariously, by the time I started hearing 'queer as a three dollar bill' on a regular basis, the people that were using it were using 'queer' in the not-heterosexual sense. This was in the late 90's in Oregon, so I think it was a case of young folks re-purposing it. I'm very familiar with full of beans, but moreso its more vulgar variation, full of piss and vinegar. And here's something awful - when I was a kid, I used to see "Over the hill" birthday stuff aimed toward people turning thirty. Thirty! I don't know when the stuff aimed that young dropped out of use, but I'm pretty sure it was before I was headed toward 30 myself.

I've lost a lot of the idioms I grew up with after living in a non-English speaking country for 11 years (it's easier to not use them than it is to explain them all the time), but one that I do remember is "[verbed] from hell to breakfast", to mean 'everywhere' or 'all over the place'. Picked it up from my mom, who picked it up from her dad, and she usually used it to complain about messiness. Frex: "I can't walk in this house with your toys scattered from hell to breakfast!" I think I mostly remember it because the first time I used it around J, his reaction was so hilariously baffled that I couldn't help but remember it.

I don't know a lot of Finnish idioms, especially not in Finnish, but my favorite is, "Don't paint devils on the walls," meaning to not imagine up problems for yourself to get stressed over.

 

My mom says "pop a squat" still too, and "bright eyed and bushy tailed" for when we're perky in the morning. She also uses "trip your trigger" for things that are supposed to be interesting or enticing, usually in the context of "did that thing from Pier 1 trip your trigger?"

Family memes are broad and varied, but the one that comes to mind especially is "you lint-licker" from the Orbitz commercials. My aunt says it with the perfect inflection, and it's sort of become the joking "you little shit" for our family.

 

I've heard "colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra" (sometimes it's the left tit specifically)