American Phrases
 

It occurred to me whilst reading and contributing to the British phrases thread, that most of what we Brits (and probably other nations too) know of American phrases, comes to us through TV shows and movies. I am guessing that's a fairly narrow experience base. Given how different dialects and language use can be in such a small island as Britain, it stands to reason there's a bunch of innately American phrases that never make it to our tv screens, or that are used differently from one state to the next.

I am a huge fan of any books set in and around Maine, because I love the phrases used by the characters and the culture those books portray.

So.....Any of you Americans care to share any gems you think we might not have come across?

How about- I beat him like a rented mule; used interchangably with; beat him like a red-headed step child. Used in competitive situations not necessarily physical. Maybe they don't reflect well on our psyche?

Oh my, that's great.

Just like the Brits in the Brit phrases thread, it's hard for me to work out what is distinctly American... and which American phrases are less known.

Stay the course.

"Y'all"

Also, I would guess that these are American: "Gotta pee like a racehorse," and "shotgun wedding."

was just wondering if " well.. fuck me running (down a gravel road) " had made it back across the pond

damn. I tell you.. culturally speaking since moving to the south I have had to learn soooooo many more phrases.. therein lies the problem with america.. it's too damn big.. too many regional dialects and phrases.. "all shot out" is a southern phrase meaning 'crazy but in a good way' (heh.. I've had a dozen people call me that, I take it as a compliment personally) still learning..helps that the g/f / neo-wife is a southerner and very intelligent so I can ask her what they mean in a 'northern'/'yankee' sense..

Hold my beer and watch this.
Shit through a tin horn.
Horny as a hoot owl.
:blush:

There's the classic "built like a brick shithouse", but who can figure how that one came to be.

That's used a lot in Britain.

In the Uk, a lot our phrases come from various sports: sticky wicket, horses for courses etc...... I guess the same is true of the US. We've all heard the 'three strikes and out' thingie (taken from your version of rounders, I believe) but I'm sure there are others....

three strikes and your out is from baseball. I have no clue what rounders is. My mother uses "pertnear" (don't know how to spell it) meaning close to. wow this is hard...hmmm. Yellow bellied snake is a bit outdated but sometimes used. Cows are sometimes referred to as "doggies." "Best in the west." is common when someone is bragging (although normally its in a joking way). Around here references to the street Harry Hines blvd has to do with prostitutes. Goin' muddin' is what the hicks do after it rains...they take their truck (normally) and find a muddy field to drive in. Drunk as a skunk...well i don't think explanation is needed. (unless you don't know what a skunk is). Vittles is food. Crackers are white people, beaners are mexicans, wetbacks are mexicans (pretty racist tho). I'll be back when I can think of some more.

is 'hook, line and sinker' also used in the US?

Our version of that is "fuck me swinging" or "fuck me drunk" or even "fuck me backwards".....if youre feeling reaallly creative you could even go as far as "fuck me drunk whilst swinging backwards"....but you would almost need to be dying of incredation (I just made that up, but it sounds cool :p ) to use that little gem.

"silly wanker" used to be mainly Australian from what I gather.

"Flamin' Galah" is NOT used by any Australian barr Alf from Home and Away (aussie sitcom).

I personally dont know anyone who says "Crikey".

"Go root your boot"

Getting "pissed" is drunk.

"off his face" is also drunk (but very old school).

I'm sure there are a tonne more, but I cant think of them now.

Pomms - those English buggers

Yanks - those American buggers

the others are NOT PC that I refuse to mention them :)

Why does America need Secret Prisons?
Cellar tag lines
What it means to be an American

Some Maine-risms:

"Jeezum Crow"
"Jeezum Crow bar" (pronounced crow-bah)
"I'll be jiggered up a hemlock"
"Can't get there from here"

Ahh, I'll think of more.

'Murrickin phrases:

Jonesing
BFE
boo-boo/owie

Another American (I think) phrase: "to bone up on" something, as in to study a subject intensely for some purpose.

The whole nine yards.

I always thought this was derived from football by someone who probably didn't last very long as a coach but found out a while back that it actually refers to the length of a string a bullets that you see guys feeding into a machine gun in WWII footage.

Balls to the wall.

Somebody's gonna have to help me out with this one. I have a feeling that this one might not have originated in America even though its used here a lot.

Freeze the balls of a brass monkey.
Colder than a witch's tit/heart.
Bumps on a log.
:litebulb:

1. Mingya!
2. S'up?

i go through phases with sayings. i dont know if their origins are strictly american, but I'm a 'merican, and i heard them in America:

All the farts came out of the blanket: gotten to the truth of the matter

dumber than a bag of hair: self explanatory

tear that up! : i'd like to copulate vigorously with that person

i wouldn't fuck her with your dick: i'd prefer not to copulate with her because i fear contracting venerial disease

Oh Oh...

sticks out like dogs balls - thats really obvious

useless as a nun's nasty - not very helpful

useless as tits on a bull - not very helpful either

full as a fat ladies sock - gee, I think I've eaten too much

paper bag material - a person of not great appeal, who's only chance of getting laid would be whilst adorning a paper bag on their head

2 paper bag material - a really unappealing person, warranting the addition of a secondary paper bag, in case the first one would malfunction.

A double bagger - One for them and one for you just in case theirs falls off!

Both of those are used in Britain, but are quite old fashioned. I think they come from around the 16th century, but I may be wrong.

Bone up on something, we use also.

"Can't get there from here". I love that. I can almost hear the Maine accent!

Also a great R.E.M. song, from 1985...

"Can't get there from here" actually comes from an old vaudeville joke.

NYC is known for lots of one way streets and bizarre traffic regulations. So when the out of town gentleman rolls down the window of his car and asks a pedestrian for directions to City Hall, the local has to stop and think for a moment.

"Let's see. Go up two streets take a left then... No that's a one way in the wrong direction.

Try this. Go right here, down two streets then go... No you can't turn left there.

Alright. You'll have to go up three streets turn right and then... Wait. That only works after 6.

Sorry buddy. You can't get there from here."

Here's a couple:

"Can I fix you some lunch?" -- fix == prepare

In the US, when someone is pissed (or pissed off), he's not drunk, he's angry.

We say pissed to mean drunk and pissed off for angry. :P
Fix we also use, but that's very regional.

In the South, we say "fixin' to" meaning "about to" or, roughly, "preparing to" - as in "I'm fixin' to post this..."

Really? I used that phrase with a young Scottish woman and she had never heard it.

How about "bought the farm"?

aheh. like I say, it's very regional. I've heard it used as in "Can I fix you a drink?"

Bought the farm. I love that one. I'd like to know the derivation of that phrase.

We tend to say-
About as pointless as Tits on a Bulldog - unnecessary
or as useful as Tits on a Bulldog - unhelpful

Although I think the paper bag jokes started as male, I've heard the phrase Double Bagger used differently by women
It describes a man who sleeps around - ie you wouldn't risk sex with him unless he was using two condoms (double bagged)

East Jabip, Podunk, the sticks, Hicksville = somewhere remote, possibly with fewer hallmarks of civilization.
Sack up, man up, cowboy up = gather up one's courage for a daunting task.

The phrase that drives me nuts - it's a very Southern US thing and unfortunately I picked it up from living in North Carolina for 5 years is: might could.

Example: We might could go to the store.

EHHH, I hate it, but I catch myself doing it.

We say tits on a boar.

ashtray on a motorbike over there, innit?

pissed ----> shit faced
piss off -----> go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut

kick the bucket?

As a friend of mine used to say "Ashtray's a girl's name".

We say tits on a bull here

Up the creek without a paddle
or in some versions (my mom's)
Up poopoo creek without a paddle

Cut the cheese (don't know how american it is)

Don't have a cow.

Up the creek without a paddle, is used here but I suspect is borrowed from America.

Daaayyyuum!

YeeeHaww!

Git Some!

Throw Down!

Ain't.

Kick-ass!

heh, the only one of those we use if ain't. I suspect that's quite old.

You don't use kick-ass?

mmm...actually, I think we do come to think about it. But we use it in an American way, if that makes sense. We use it with an awareness that we are using American slang.

Makes perfect sense... I use some UK phrases like that.
Bully for you.

Do you guys use 'good egg' and 'bad egg'?

I don't but many do.

I thought they'd more or less died out over here but then in the mid-nineties i discovered that they were used quite a lot by drug-dealing types in the north ( you don't need to know how I know that :P) There's something quite sinister about a slightly psychopathic speed dealer saying someone's a 'bad egg'. Always got the impression someone was about to get their head staved in.

I hear it more from older people.

dumber than a bag of hammers or box of rocks.
tighter than a nun's nasty or no no
tighter than a frog's asshole (that's water tight) or (yuck) a two year old.

I jus...... come down...... from Maine.
Back home was.... the duttyest man..... you evah.... did see.
His name.... was Enoch..... Turner.
Enoch....had a brotha....named Stomach.....Turner.
Now Stomach....got brought befoa the Jedge......for bein'...so dutty.
Jedge says..... Stomach......how come yoah.... so dutty?
Stomach says.....Jedge......how often...... do you change.... your shirt?
Jedge says.....why...I change my shirt.....eeevery day.
Stomach says....now Jedge...how can you sit there and call me dutty....when you dutty 365 shirts... a year.....to my one?
I jus.....come down...from Maine.
:D

From my Navy time, and haven't much heard it anywhere else, except from my Navy-retiree wife who heard it there too:

Piggly Wiggly three-bagger takes a touch of explanation as to its antecedents. Piggly Wiggly is a fairly widely distributed grocery store chain, mostly in the Old South; thus, paper grocery bags, along with the obvious suggestion about this ungainly sex partner you're putting up with. One bag for you and two over her head, just in case her first bag tears open!

Late in her Navy years, my wife once delivered herself of the expletive, "Son of a syphilitic slime-dog!" in public hearing. A little later, a couple of callow young seamen sidled up to her to ask for a repeat, that they might take notes. Ah, educating the young and eager...

Lock, stock, and barrel -- precisely synonymous with hook, line, and sinker. Lists the main components of a flintlock rifle.

A Southernism: eat up with (something) -- suffering greatly, said with a strong, groaning emphasis on "up." "I'm about eat up with the dumb-ass" isn't about anybody but oneself: "boy, was I fucking stupid!" -- rightly said if you just deliberately tried to drive your classic-car hot-rod over a new sinkhole and you're watching its taillights just going under. "How's the arthritis?" "I'm about eat up with it."

Airhead continues to develop: "Blow in my ear, honey, I need a refill." "If you stuck a pressure gauge in her ear, it'd draw about 790 Torr." In even worse mental case than the kind of thing Eeyore railed about re the unintelligent: ". . .just have some gray fluff in their heads that got blown in by mistake."

My uncle reports from his time working in the UK for Procter and Gamble that "all set" in the sense of "we have enough" was a phrase that Englishmen didn't understand; telling a waitress inquiring if there was anything else she might get them that "no thanks, we're all set" left her nonplused.

There are all sorts of explanations for "the whole nine yards" and about all of them miss fire on some inconvenient point...

The standard full load for a cement mixer truck is ten cubic yards, not nine.

There was a rather durable story that the ammunition load for the wing guns of the P-51 Mustang fighter was a nine-yard belt of .50 caliber for each of six guns, and there are a few photos of ground crewmen schlepping a belt of the stuff that looks durn near nine yards total, but then some iconoclast went and did some measuring or interviewing.

I'm sure y'all have seen me make slightly Southern sounding posts sometimes...

Nauticalisms come to mind, some of which are suffering from a decay of meaning: by and large didn't mean generally to the sailors of yesteryear, but I'm not sure enough of what it did mean to say without doing some googling first. Splice the mainbrace hasn't, but is fading into mere quaintness. Hit between wind and water is better explained as holes in the hull than as catching a wallop in the perineum, I think. Copperbottomed is out of currency nowadays except in historical novels.