The "Pleasing Phrase" Thread

[Selvaggio]

Sorry to lower the tone...

My nanna used to excuse little bodily explosions by saying, "It's better to have an empty house than a bad tenant".

She very rarely swore, but she would sometimes remark that someone had the "S - H - one - Ts".

 

[Carlisle Blues]

The most pleasing phrase I could ever say is:

"Come, take my hand..."

That speaks to my essence and encompasses all that I am and all that I could ever be.

 

[Bourbon Guy]

I hear a lot of hunters (not in the know) who refer to the rifle caliber 30-06 Springfield as thirty-odd-six rather than thirty-aught-six. Bit off topic-
It bothers me because I like the sound of aught, and I try night to let my New York accent pronounce auwwwt.

Never heard it as anything BUT aught six. Of course the old timers like my grandpa, born 1896, used to refer to 1905 as "aught 5," 1909 as "aught 9," and so on. Even my father would say "aught" rather than "zero" when he helped me do my grade school math way back when. You brought back a nice memory. Thanks.

 

[Diamondback]

I'll just take a simple "Nicely done" or "That'll do" along with my paycheck, thank you very much.

 

[Bourbon Guy]

Well, there you go then.

 

[HannahJane]

We have a couple of sayings in my family that my great grandfather used to come out with and I think are great.

If you ask where something is the some what baffling answers is always, "Under the clock in Annie's room." Where this came from is a bit of a mystery because there was never anyone called Annie in our family!

The second one is the answer to asking where someone is, you get told that "They've gone for a soldier."

I really like both expressions but people outside of the family just find me odd for using them (doesn't stop me though!)

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

The phrases I often like best are the unusual ones (some of them are not unusual in my part of the country):

"Your handier 'en a front shirt pocket, boy!"

"Darn right!"

"Ever cotton pickin' one!"

"How are you'ns doin'?"

"You're a real gad-about"


Most people I know say 30-06, "thurdee owt see-yix."

 

[Grnidwitch]

I don't know how "pleasing" these would be, but it's what I was raised with:

Choke your motor, Junior.......I still use that one, modified to Throttle back to my motorcycle friends.

You look like the wreck of the Hesperis....which was an actual ship sunk somewhere.

And when someone falls, its @ss over elbows....

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

One of my favorite childhood poems:



"WRECK OF THE HESPERUS"
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintery sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The Skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
for I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring,
Oh, say, what may it be?"
"Tis a fog-bell on a rock bound coast!" --
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns;
Oh, say, what may it be?"
Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

 

[Bustercat]

These are just great to read.

Off the top of my head, my mom called all of our tableware "cutlery," any overnight bag a "necessaire," and referred to other parts of the house as "outside." As in, "Help me move the TV back outside." My dad would talk about "closing" the light to turn it off, and both still refer to garbage chutes in apartment buildings as "the incinerator."
I'll have to think of some phrases, as what I've thought of so far is pretty boring. There were definitely some gems.

 

[bunnyb.gal]

Sorry to lower the tone...

My nanna used to excuse little bodily explosions by saying, "It's better to have an empty house than a bad tenant".

She very rarely swore, but she would sometimes remark that someone had the "S - H - one - Ts".

Sorry to lower the tone further...

My grandfather-in-law used to say (translated from the French), "It's better to break wind in company then to die all alone". Which does beg one or two questions.

I don't know whether it's a traditional French saying or, well, just him!

 

[Ethan Bentley]

"I feel like a dog called fetch"

(wagging a finger) "and I'll tell you for why"

 

[grundie]

There's a few phrases my mother uses and which I have picked up on and use just as much...

"Ah sure, give it a go, you never know."
"Whatever you do, don't get caught."

and the rather confusing....

"Ah, sure he couldne (sic) get a cat through the eye of a donkey"

I also love how she uses local slang so much...

Wains (pron, waynes) = Children.
The Bars = Local gossip.
Yes = Hello (really, where I come from people greet you by saying "Yes! How are you?")
1-bob and 2-bob to refer to 5p and 10p pieces respectively.

 

[Brian R.]

I've always liked "nervous as a cats tail"

My dad would always say, "Nervous as a longtailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

 

[Ethan Bentley]

I have a friend who often end s a chat on the telephone with:
"and on that bombshell, I'll let you go."

Quite amusing.

 

[Undertow]

When something really pleases my mother she says "Well ain't that the cat's backside."

My dad used to say "It's hotter'n a two-dollar pistol."
"That'll keep the honest people out."
"There's nothing older than yesterday's newspaper."

My grandfather-in-law used to say (translated from the French), "It's better to break wind in company then to die all alone". Which does beg one or two questions.

These are my favorites so far.

I didn't see it mentioned, but I know there's a common one among the older guys in reference to using the restroom, "Be right back; gonna go see a man about a horse."

 

[Marc Chevalier]

.
When a wedding party would drive by, my grandmother would say, "Somebody got in trouble."

 

[dhermann1]

Nice to see this thread revived out of the blue.
The first phrase that popped to mind when I saw this was a phrase some of the old country folks used to use as an interjection: "Doncha know". They'd just say blah blah blah, "doncha know".
Ought ought to get revived. My grandmother wrote the lyrics to her college class song back in 1908. She sang it to me (almost 60 years later), emphasizing the word, "Ninetee-een ou-ought eight."

 

[Stanley Doble]

Stephen Leacock wrote about how the fashionable people no longer lived in houses with porches, they occupied residences with piazzas lol. This was about 1910.

A sample of Leacock from Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

http://books.google.ca/books?id=f-W...VBg&sqi=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Gone for a soldier refers to young men who had joined the army. In WW1 if you hadn't seen someone around in a while that was likely where they had gone. The phrase is from the late 19 century to WW1.

The only use of the phrase under the clock I have heard, was to refer to someone in jail as "he is under the clock". This is because the jail was in the town hall, or court house which had a big clock on the roof.

 

[vitanola]

My dad would always say, "Nervous as a longtailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

Busy as a long-tailed paper hanger in a room full of nervous one armed cats in rocking chairs