Amusing Sayings From English Or Other Languages

In English there are loads of sayings in the language. Hundreds of them. Little wisdoms or wisecracks. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. Some of it is so old it is a cliche. Like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

But what about other languages? They also have their sayings and some of them are crackers. I have a new romanian compañero and having exhausted my one romanian phrase - buna diminieta (good morning) - I thought I'd google something to make him laugh* in romanian.

To screw something up irrevocably in romanian translates as "To drip snot into your beans"..


Has anyone got any other good 'uns?






* he did laugh

 

That's horrible!

I tend to end a few communications with Warren Zeavon's " Enjoy every sandwich".

I find Italian and Ancient Greek best for exclaiming on court,no one or very few understand!

Then again quite a few don't understand when I speak in English!

My brother's mother in law used to say to her husband " You're about as much use as Chernobyl". Chernobyl was their pig.

 

My mother in law used to say when there was a storm nearby "It's dark over Will's mothers"

 

Upon spotting a particularly large pair of knockers my dad will exclaim ‘you don’t get many of them to the pound’. Another one of his favourites is to say an unattractive person ‘has a face like a smashed crab’

I vaguely remember my great grandmother from when I was little and she would always be telling me that she’d ‘have my guts for garters’ and if I was sulking to pull my bottom lip in because ‘a bird will sh*t on it’

 

How many mothers did Will have?

 

I say that regularly, although not specifically about knockers.

 

In English, if you want to avoid saying sh1t, you could say ‘sugar!’ In French, if you want to avoid saying merde (sh1t), you would say ‘mercredi!’ (wednesday).

 

My wife is from the East Midlands and her family say "it's a bit black over Bill's mother's". I looked it up and apparently "Bill" is / was Kaiser Wilhelm.

 

"Face like a bag of spanners", or my personal favourite, "looks like someone set fire to their face and put it out with a mallet".

Also, "fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down".

 

That’s the version I’m more familiar with.

‘Ey up me duck’ seems to be dying out as a greeting round these parts, never hear it now. You still occasionally get called duck or duckeh by older people in Leicestershire and Nottingham. More of a colloquialism that a phrase though.

 

I like ‘I bet you a pound to a pinch of sh*t’ for something that’s blatantly obvious. Like, ‘I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of **** that they don’t show up later’ if someone is a bit flakey.

 

"The nail that sticks out will be hammered down" is a Japanese saying. Precocious children watch out, we like uniformity

 

The trouble with that one is that on more than one occasion I've led into it and while I'm saying it, realised it's not an appropriate place to be swearing, and despite thinking furiously have been completely unable to think of anything else you could have a pinch of....while realising everyone anyway already knows the punchline is shīt and so are already offended...

 

My Mum and Dad's favourite was, you can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter. Their usual references to my brother and hideous array of cattle he called girlfriends.
If I pulled a face or was sulking my mum would say the last time I saw a face like that it had a hook in its mouth.

 

In Norfolk, if somebody's telling a story, you have to day "Izzat roi'?" every so often to show you're still listening.

 

I think you can get away with saying salt.

I love swearing so much, it’s a really hard habit to break now we have a small child. Especially earlier when he bit me quite hard on the shoulder.

 

I have started swearing again in front of the kids. They've had 9 and 11 years respectively of me watching my tongue. Now they can hear me curse and just know they aren't to repeat it.

 

When I moved to Devon and thanked the lady in the shop for my change after my purchase she said
“ That’s alrite mi luvver “

I’m still trying to recall where we first met…

 

Bill’s mother’s surely?

 

Probably 2 - birth and m-in-law.

I think Keighley missed out on correcting my grammar on that one

 

So those using Bill just anglicised it from the shortening of Wilhelm to Will. My mother in law hailed from North Wales so maybe that was the variant there

 

Salt
You could take that with a pinch of salt

 

My mother (just the one) used to say when the weather was clearing and blue sky appearing "there's not enough yet to make a sailor boy a pair of trousers"

 

Last (for now) my mother in law (yes again) used to say people could go to hell in a handcart if they annoyed her, (There seem to be various variants on the method of transportation for this one).

 

It's gets worse. My 14 and 15 year old have mouths like a sewer. 15 year old girl is incapable of finishing a sentence without a swear word, though at a friends on Saturday night, she said completely reined it in with younger kids around. I do nag them about it a bit, but it's in one ear and out the other.

Should have known from when we were at Leicester away a 2 seasons ago and heard her singing "Schmeical you're a c**t" along with those around her.

 

Years ago when I played the senior event at Dudley I stopped for some food at a fish and chip shop being the highly tuned athlete that I am!

When I had placed my order the lady behind the counter said " Minminordsivinpands".

I replied " I beg your pardon?"

She repeated as before.

On the fourth occasion I had worked out she had said "Minimum order,£7".

I nodded sagely and asked for a lettuce or something.

She then replied with " me ducks" which I later discovered was quite usual!

 

Very good.

My Mother used to say the sky was as black as Newgate's Knocker, although it was pronounced more like nugget when she said it.

Newgate Street Prison I assume?

 

Diction and enunciation isn’t a strong point of the Midlands and the Black Country, I’ll give you that. I find it really hard to understand that sort of Dudley/Wolverhampton accent.

In Leicester ‘How much is it?’ Becomes ‘Ahmachizzit’ which is just daft.

 

I don’t know if it’s a regional or more common greeting but ‘Are you winning?’ gets on my nerves.

What do you say to it? ‘Yes, I’m winning thanks…’

Stupid saying.

 

I think I played her at Beckenham one year!

No relation to Muzzy?!

 

‘Duck’ or ‘m’duck’ is still in regular usage in Northampton, as is ‘chap’ which can be used instead of ‘mate’, ‘bloke’ ‘geezer’ etc.
My wife looks at me with incredulity when I point out what her accent sounds like when someone comes out with a comment in broad Northamptonian…she’s convinced there is no ‘local accent’.

 

In Gloucester it's 'look' added to sentences.

'I went to town, look, and bought some new shoes look."

 

For both of us the answer is generally "no, we conceded in the first minute"

 

I was confused when I heard that for the first time. I wondered if Helena Handcart was a friend of the family who'd punch people on our behalf

 

In Morocco a shop keeper called me 'the product of a camel and a rusty nail' after we failed to agree a price for some piece of junk that had caught Mrs Lloyd's eye