thedrifter
06-18-07, 06:53 AM
My Mother's Old-Fashioned Sayings
By Carol W. Kimball
Published on 6/18/2007 in Home »Region »Region News
Please close the door,” my mother would say when I got home from school and left the kitchen door wide open. “Were you brought up in a barn?” That was one of her favorite sayings, along with lots of others that you don't often hear nowadays. Barns and farms figured in many of them. Everyone had a barn, or lived near one. If we were playing catch and I missed, someone would say, “You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if you tried!” Or I might hear, “Too late to lock the barn after the horse is stolen.” All those references are fading from our culture.
Chickens were part of our lives then. “Your chickens will come home to roost,” my mother would observe, meaning that I would get what I deserved for my actions. And sometimes she would say that I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
When I helped with house-cleaning, she might caution, “Use plenty of elbow grease,” meaning to put some muscle behind my work. Or if she was rushed that day, it would be, “I'll just give it a lick and a promise,” meaning once over lightly. If I dawdled I'd hear, “You're as slow as molasses in January!” That referred to the times when molasses jugs were kept in unheated cellars or woodsheds during cold winter months and the thick stuff congealed in the freezing temperatures.
When I talked too much my mother would remark, “You chatter like a chipmunk. I think your tongue is fastened in the middle and wags at both ends.” At the table, if I left food on my plate, I heard, “Your eyes were bigger than your stomach.”
My father had a few favorites too. “Born too long ago,” he would say when he felt a touch of arthritis. He also liked “dead as a doornail,” whatever a doornail is, and “six of one and half a dozen of the other.” “Cat got your tongue?” he would ask if I didn't answer a question right away. Talking about an elderly friend he would announce, “I've known him since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” or “since Methuselah was a pup.” When he finished work he used to say, “I've been as busy as a one-armed paper-hanger.”
I recall that when my mother was provoked she would say, “Go pound sand!” I hadn't heard that for years until my friend Betty Ann was annoyed with a recent incident at Elm Grove Cemetery. She told me, “I was so mad I told him to go pound sand!” It's the equivalent of “go fly a kite,” I suppose, but I couldn't make much sense out of it. However, on the Internet, I learned that the expression comes from the forgotten custom of filling rat holes with sand, apparently an ancient means of rodent control. I'm told the expression can have a slightly shady meaning too, but I'm sure my mother had no knowledge of any double entendre.
“A poor excuse is better than none,” she would say when I tried to explain why I hadn't cleaned my room. Alternatives to that were, “Tell that to Sweeney,” (whoever he was), or “Tell that to the Marines.” We heard “If the shoe fits, put it on” when we were discussing blame for some transgression. There were quotations to suit almost any occasion. It was common to hear someone say, “I'm as happy as a clam.” That always puzzled me, but I've been told that the whole expression should be “as happy as a clam at high tide.” People dig clams when the tide is low, so of course they're happy when they're out of reach at high tide.
Most of Mother's sayings that I remember make some kind of sense, interpreted in the light of the times. But one favorite I still can't understand. If she was greatly distressed or disgusted, she would say, “That just about gives me the hypos!” Or perhaps it was “gives me the high pose.” I never heard anyone else use that expression. Did she mean that she was so upset that she needed a shot to calm her down? To this day I don't know. I was interested to find on the Internet under folk sayings, a listing for “hypos” with the notation that the meaning was yet to be determined. I hope I'm among the first to know.
Another mysterious but often-used expression, especially when we had some wild plans of which she disapproved, was “I'll put the kibosh on that.” She meant simply, “Forget it!” I had no idea where that came from, but the miraculous Internet again had something to say. There are several theories about its origin. One holds that it is from the Yiddish “Kabas,” meaning suppress. Others think it comes from the Gaelic phrase “cie blas” meaning cup of death. We know Charles Dickens used it in his writing, spelling it “Kye-bosk.” But when my mother used the term in Quaker Hill so long ago, there was no doubt about her meaning.
carolkimball0647@yahoo.com
Ellie
By Carol W. Kimball
Published on 6/18/2007 in Home »Region »Region News
Please close the door,” my mother would say when I got home from school and left the kitchen door wide open. “Were you brought up in a barn?” That was one of her favorite sayings, along with lots of others that you don't often hear nowadays. Barns and farms figured in many of them. Everyone had a barn, or lived near one. If we were playing catch and I missed, someone would say, “You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if you tried!” Or I might hear, “Too late to lock the barn after the horse is stolen.” All those references are fading from our culture.
Chickens were part of our lives then. “Your chickens will come home to roost,” my mother would observe, meaning that I would get what I deserved for my actions. And sometimes she would say that I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
When I helped with house-cleaning, she might caution, “Use plenty of elbow grease,” meaning to put some muscle behind my work. Or if she was rushed that day, it would be, “I'll just give it a lick and a promise,” meaning once over lightly. If I dawdled I'd hear, “You're as slow as molasses in January!” That referred to the times when molasses jugs were kept in unheated cellars or woodsheds during cold winter months and the thick stuff congealed in the freezing temperatures.
When I talked too much my mother would remark, “You chatter like a chipmunk. I think your tongue is fastened in the middle and wags at both ends.” At the table, if I left food on my plate, I heard, “Your eyes were bigger than your stomach.”
My father had a few favorites too. “Born too long ago,” he would say when he felt a touch of arthritis. He also liked “dead as a doornail,” whatever a doornail is, and “six of one and half a dozen of the other.” “Cat got your tongue?” he would ask if I didn't answer a question right away. Talking about an elderly friend he would announce, “I've known him since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” or “since Methuselah was a pup.” When he finished work he used to say, “I've been as busy as a one-armed paper-hanger.”
I recall that when my mother was provoked she would say, “Go pound sand!” I hadn't heard that for years until my friend Betty Ann was annoyed with a recent incident at Elm Grove Cemetery. She told me, “I was so mad I told him to go pound sand!” It's the equivalent of “go fly a kite,” I suppose, but I couldn't make much sense out of it. However, on the Internet, I learned that the expression comes from the forgotten custom of filling rat holes with sand, apparently an ancient means of rodent control. I'm told the expression can have a slightly shady meaning too, but I'm sure my mother had no knowledge of any double entendre.
“A poor excuse is better than none,” she would say when I tried to explain why I hadn't cleaned my room. Alternatives to that were, “Tell that to Sweeney,” (whoever he was), or “Tell that to the Marines.” We heard “If the shoe fits, put it on” when we were discussing blame for some transgression. There were quotations to suit almost any occasion. It was common to hear someone say, “I'm as happy as a clam.” That always puzzled me, but I've been told that the whole expression should be “as happy as a clam at high tide.” People dig clams when the tide is low, so of course they're happy when they're out of reach at high tide.
Most of Mother's sayings that I remember make some kind of sense, interpreted in the light of the times. But one favorite I still can't understand. If she was greatly distressed or disgusted, she would say, “That just about gives me the hypos!” Or perhaps it was “gives me the high pose.” I never heard anyone else use that expression. Did she mean that she was so upset that she needed a shot to calm her down? To this day I don't know. I was interested to find on the Internet under folk sayings, a listing for “hypos” with the notation that the meaning was yet to be determined. I hope I'm among the first to know.
Another mysterious but often-used expression, especially when we had some wild plans of which she disapproved, was “I'll put the kibosh on that.” She meant simply, “Forget it!” I had no idea where that came from, but the miraculous Internet again had something to say. There are several theories about its origin. One holds that it is from the Yiddish “Kabas,” meaning suppress. Others think it comes from the Gaelic phrase “cie blas” meaning cup of death. We know Charles Dickens used it in his writing, spelling it “Kye-bosk.” But when my mother used the term in Quaker Hill so long ago, there was no doubt about her meaning.
carolkimball0647@yahoo.com
Ellie