Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Phrases you never quite understood

adamswish

13:38 / 20.03.03

Inspired by Qalyn's thread on the little old ladies slogan, is there any phrase or saying you've never quite understood.

My example is the phrase "Shit eating grin". Usually applied to someone with a very large smile and kind of a contented aurea about them. But why that particular phrase.

Maybe I'm not kinky enough to imagine anyone being happy while engaged in that process, or maybe I've missed some cultural reference in the saying (and of course this is where I find out I'm the only one who uses the phrase, another black mark for me lord).

So can anyone shed some light on this and what are you're phrases that you use but don't really understand...

Jack Fear

13:47 / 20.03.03

here's a source for info on phrases and sayings, but they don't explain that particular beauty.

Don't try to teach your grandma to suck eggs is one I've heard—meaning anything from "Don't presume to school somebody more informed than you do," to "Don't kid a kidder." It's an old proverb... but why was granny sucking eggs anyway? (although I do find it amusing that Tolkien alluded to this proverb in The Hobbit.)

8===>Q: alyn

13:52 / 20.03.03

I always took "shit eating grin" to describe an irritatingly satisfied person. Like, "Go eat shit, you happy asshole."

I know that "sucking eggs" was stealing them from the chicken hatch. If a dog did it, you had to shoot him. I'd guess you can't teach grandma to suck eggs because she's trickier than you.

Matthew Fluxington

13:55 / 20.03.03

I have some vague understanding of what the phrase "meet cute" means, but I'm not entirely certain. I also have no idea where that phrase comes from. Would anyone like to fill me in?

that

14:00 / 20.03.03

I always thought the sucking eggs thing was referring to granny having no teeth and having to suck her eggs. But perhaps that's just me.

rizla mission

14:04 / 20.03.03

I've always hated the phrase "pissed as a fart". As well as promoting some mental images I could really do without, it just doesn't make any sense.

Jack Fear

14:07 / 20.03.03

Flux: Film critic Roger Ebert may have coined "meet cute": in any case, he codifies and defines it in his Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary as "the way for the two protagonists to meet in any romantic comedy movies. It usually involves the man walking down the street, minding his own business when all of a sudden, a female bowls into him, spilling all her packages. The two meet while he is helping her pick them up."

Shrug

06:04 / 21.03.03

I used to think that "a stitch in time saves nine" was a really abstract saying then I figured out it was about sowing.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

13:46 / 23.03.03

I've always wondered about the phrase "Well, that went down about as well as a lead balloon.", meaning not very well at all.

Surely a lead balloon will go down better than almost any other type of balloon you could imagine. Surely "That went down about as well as a helium-filled balloon" would be much more appropriate.

Shrug

13:56 / 23.03.03

Maybe it is more to do with deflation?

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:00 / 23.03.03

I thought it was "went down like a lead balloon" - which would make more sense?

gravitybitch

21:41 / 23.03.03

How about that old saw, "head over heels" - sounds like somebody standing to me.

Kit-Cat Club

21:54 / 23.03.03

I think that one may just have been transposed somehow over time - Brewer's says: 'Literally, turning a somersault, hence, completely, utterly, as 'head over heels in love,' when one is quite 'bowled over'. The expression, originally 'heels over head', had a Latin equivalent in per caputque pedesque.'

Add Your Reply