Working on a press release, I stumbled in my journey to find a fun expression to use in a paragraph. Hubby came along and asked what I was doing. I explained and he suggested using “A cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
“Huh?”
I like to think I’m up on my slanguage, idioms, cliches, and I don’t know this one. But I like it and it makes sense. Even if it doesn’t, it makes you smile, doesn’t it? You may hear variations of this such “as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” It means edgy, jumpy, or nervous. But take off the first part, and it could mean the cat feels overwhelmed by all the choices. In either case, it sounds funny.
Sometimes I’ll use, “Dagnabbit!” Sounds better and funnier than “Damn!” or “Darn!” It almost always makes me smile and feel better.
My grandmother, who had diabetes, would say, “Oh, sugar” when most people say “Damn it” or worse. Mom told me a story about my grandfather. While driving, he faced a rude driver. His face turned red and he dug his thoughts for something to say as he never cussed… “You… you… you, worm!” Mom said that was about the angriest he ever got that she remembered.
Steve Blow’s column in The Dallas Morning News (might require free registration) greeted me with more dying words and expressions.
Land o’Goshen, cattywampus, sakes alive (snakes alive)
Yonder, gumption, much obliged, picture show (movie), poetic of a mornin’ (evenin’) rat cheer
Wait. “Rat cheer?” I haven’t heard that one, but a professor at a local college wants to save that one. It takes searching to find this one — it sounds like and means “Right here.” A baseball game vendor could yell, “Getcha peanuts rat cheer!”
“Well, I swanee!” You can’t help but grin at that one, right? For me, it evokes memories of Al Jolson and Swanee River. “How I love ya, my dear old Swanee…” No, I’m not 93 years old, but I love Vaudeville.
What old phrases do you miss, still say, or still hear?
4 thoughts on “Save Endangered Words”
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I used the old saying “people in hell wish they had icecubes” the other day. One of my workers busted out laughing and I usually rely on him to say all kinds of funny sayings. I always thought of the words to be very powerful. Yet another reason you should live a good life treating people right and quit whining if somethings aren’t going your way.
I first heard the long tailed cat expression when referring to how fast one could go. “He’s faster than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” Or, “He’s faster than greased snail snot.” However, that is getting rather vulgar, or one could say I’m prone to quiddling about. 😛
I’m not sure how widespread these phrases were, but I always liked saying:
“That’s bigger than your head.” (Meaning great, as well as big)
“From here to Cleveland” (Meaning great, as well as a long way)
“What-ever…”
“Bu-bye” (from SNL)
As for onomatopoeia phrases, I used to say “Marcus Welby” instead of “might as well be”.
This week I’ve picked up on “Hai — Majide!” from that silly little show. I’ve also been using “That’s Southbend” (as in Indiana, as in “that’s great” — from Jimmy Pardo’s Never Not Funny Pardcast, though nobody understands me…)
~Graham
Graham Strong’s last blog post… Profiling Your Target Market
Graham… Buh-bye. I love that… I remember the skit when the airplane flight attendants were kicking off the passengers with their buh-byes. 🙂