When examined, or just because it’s weird on its own.
Example: Beat a dead horse
- You whip a horse to go faster
- It dies from being whipped too much
- You still want the horse to go faster
- You continue to whip it
Does the pope shit in the woods?
A humerous combo of ‘Do bears shit in the woods?’ and ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ Which are two jokey ways of saying ‘Yeah, obviously, duh’.
My wife used to work in the backcountry. Lots of unpaved remote roads. Bears apparently do not shit in the woods. They shit on the road.
Do they, or did someone put a road through a bear’s outhouse?
But does the pope shit in the woods?
No, he’s trapped in the pope mobile , that thing isn’t equipped for offroad travel
No, but bears are catholic
“I’m not here to fuck spiders” - said by Australians who want to drop the preamble and get down to business.
That’s hilarious, I should try that out
Nah, surprise everyone.
Leap into the room, exclaim “I’m here to fuck spiders”, then drop trou and hump a cobweb.
Keep the bastards guessing
And here I was, just assuming that to be true about most people…
How inconsiderate of me.Well, it’s Australia. Spiders have the vote.
Taking God’s name in vain
- You invoke God on some topic you’re wrong about.
- God appears and sees your worthless comment.
- ???
- God punishes you, or he backs away, or he learns to not listen to you anymore in boy cries wolf type situation? Its really not clear what the repercussions are.
I think the idea was that he could be invoked by his name, but they couldn’t have people going around saying “Jehova” (or whatever) randomly without any cool powers happening, so they made up the rule to discourage people poking holes in their flimsy story.
That’s one that always bothered me too. When I say “Jesus fucking Christ” I mean it. Which is it’s own weird ism when you think about it…
I thought it was stating that something is God’s will for your own purposes. AFAIK it’s not just using terms for God as a curse.
No, no, it was originally “Taking God’s name in vein,” as saying the name of God out loud would allow Him into your blood. If you say the name of God, you allow him to inhabit your blood, gain your power, and become even more mighty. The ancient Hebrews feared God gaining too much power, as He would be able to destroy the world. Then Christians figured out that if they took Communion and instead drank the blood of Christ, they could reverse the Hebrew God’s power and slowly increase their own until they could ascend to the heavens and do battle with the Almighty, empowered by His blood in their veins, rather than weakened by taking His name in vein. In this seventeen-part essay, I will describe how we can defeat God by
This is mind blowing if true. Is this real? What’s going on here? Are you serious?
yes everything you read on the Internet is true.
Not real, but certainly creative.
This lore makes more sense than the bible.
The bible is a collection of thousands of years of oral history and societal laws put to paper generations after the fact, allegory and letters to random fuckers and varying accounts of a Jewish cult leader who was executed for crimes against the state. It’s gonna have a potted narrative.
“scientists say…”
They aren’t some unified entity. They don’t even agree amongst themselves on most things if one digs deep enough. While there is some interpretation of the data involved, most people that use the phrase “Scientists say…” are essentially saying “Objective observations done by several of the smartest humans have been argued over by several of their rivals resulting in…”
Like, we should start calling them something like Observational Data Warriors ™ /s to put perspective on the magnitude of information and depth involved. You can have an opinion but you are a coward of no relevant value if you are not trained for battle and fighting on the front lines. So whatever nonsense you have to say results in you looking like a clown of no note.
Scientists say "im off to work dear, see you this afternoon”.
but seriously, we have to trust experts in STEM just to get through our day. Every time someone give the "scientists can be wrong too” line i look up at the ceiling as if its about to collapse. Sure science is about continuous improvement and falsifiability but that guys PHD is not equivalent to your youtube recomendations pipeline.
Dollars to donuts.
WTF does it even mean?
I’m so sure that this thing will happen, that I’m willing to make a bet whereby I’ll pay you dollars if it doesn’t happen, and you pay me donuts if it does. I feel like I’m getting free donuts and my dollars are not at risk.
Well, back in the day, a doughnut cost a lot less than a donut.
So, betting dollars against donuts would be a bad idea.
Not that it was ever a betting term, it just condone contains a reference to betting.
It’s like saying “hey, lets get dinner. You give me a twig for every dollar I put in.”
You’re either exchanging something of unequal value, or making an “investment” where you get very little return on it.
You can lead a whore to water, but you can’t make her douche.
Yap, still guessing
Whenever my dad is being lazy or doing something too slowly, my mom says he’s “dicking the dog”. Whatever that means.
🤨
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
- You have a cat.
- You wish to remove its skin.
- You realize there’s more than just one method to accomplish this unusual task.
- You state this proudly as a metaphor for problem-solving flexibility.
Related: a small room that “doesn’t have enough room to swing a cat”.
“it’ll be a bloodbath in there!” *used for anything political wise.
“It’s raining cats and dogs.”
Somehow, heavy rain is represented by a downpour of household animals.
This one is because when houses had straw roofs, cats and dogs would sit up there, and come down in the rain.
The household animals are not pouring down. This saying describes rainfall that is so powerful that it washes away the dead cats and dogs lying in the gutter in medieval cities.
Interesting. I always thought it was because the rain was so heavy it drove all the strays to seek shelter, so people noticed a lot more cats and dogs in front of their homes. I think a grade school teacher told me that when I was a kid. I like the dead animal version better.
It’s previously rained frogs or fish from clouds, at certain times throughout history.
So, cats and dogs is an even more intense version of that maybe.
Mind your ps and qs. What are ps and qs?
I’ve heard that it means pints and quarts, referring to beers. I feel like I’ve also heard it was a typesetter thing.
The Wikipedia entry on that one is a fun read. I’ve heard most of these possible origins before, but nobody is actually sure of the true origin of the phrase. It’s kind of frustrating, but also pretty neat that we still use a phrase long after we forgot where it came from.
The typesetter one makes so much sense, since handling mirror images of letter you will definitely get your p and q mixed up.
I know there are lots of possible origins for this phrase, but I think of it as “pleases” and “thank yous”. The “k” sound from “thank” followed by the word “you” combine to sound like the letter q.
Break a leg
How does telling someone to sustain serious injuries imply you want them to succeed?
My understanding is that that was the original intention of the phrase. It’s meant to be ironic but then the irony was lost as the phrase got more popular
In Northern Ireland (Belfast especially), we sometimes say “bout ye?” as a greeting. It’s just “what about you?” but actually meaning “how are you?”
Often it’s just used as an alternative to “hello” or “hi”, and you’re not actually asking the person how they are.
*North of Ireland
“Reet” in Yorkshire.
Keep fucking that chicken.
I’ve never heard that one before. But now I’m going to use it.
My wife has worked with lots of people who are not native English speakers who are sometimes taken aback by the idioms. One colleague flat out refused to accept that “FOMO” is a word.
I suggested that she is in a position to make some up, like “Let’s not put fish in the milk bucket.” But she didn’t go for it. I guess she’s not an agent of chaos after all :/
You’ve got to mold that silicone or you’ll never be fulfilled.
“Let’s not put fish in the milk bucket.”
Honestly better than many other common sayings.
