Ask Lemmy

"It's a doggy dog world."

If only...

When im in a pinch, ill take a warm rag and soap to wash my armpits, and i call it a "horse bath". Way better than calling it a "whore's bath"

oh oh oh i REALLY like this question. boy have i struggled with idioms over my life. theres so many idioms that trouble an confuse me that i cant even think of a favorite example.

heres a silly one - i always thought it was "bald faced lie" as in .. like a blank, emotionless faced lie.

no, i guess its actually "bold faced lie" meaning kinda the opposite, that the lie is brazen and obvious.

Jesus cries vs Jesus Christ

Like, when things are so bad even Jesus is mourning it.

Recently the lyrics just clicked for the Smiths song How Soon is Now. I thought he says "I am the sun and the air" as more of a metaphor, but he says "I am the son and the heir."

Most people misconstrue the phrase “blood is thicker than water”. The WHOLE phrase is “blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb”. It literally means the opposite of what most people think it does.

The other day I heard someone say "fuck around and find out" to mean "experiment to discover the correct path" and was really amused by that concept.

“Work cut out for you”

I always thought I meant that the job was made easier. Like in carpentry, if someone makes your cuts for you, half the job is done!

Mine is FTFY as fuck that fuck you.

For the longest time, in my online vocabulary, POC meant "piece of crap". And then a few years back I started seeing posts and articles where this and that person was referred to as a POC, and it took me a while of thinking "that's a bit harsh, though?", until I realized that my three decades old IRC lingo had to be updated.

I can live without my original definition, as POS serves the same purpose. Plus, my earlier use had no connection to skin tone, but using it as "Piece of Crap" today gives some racist undertones that I don't want to be associated with.

not sure if it qualifies but my father used to say assburn when pronouncing aspirin. I like his pronunciation better.

Not quite what you're asking for, but when I first heard the phrase "balls to the wall", I thought that it alluded to testicles. One of the Grand Theft Auto games has some radio audio that uses it satirically in this sense as well ("Lazlow, get your balls to the wall" or something similar).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall

First attested in the 1960s in the context of aviation, in reference to ball-shaped grips on an aircraft's engine controls (typically throttle, prop pitch and fuel mixture). Pushing these "balls to the wall" would put the aircraft at maximum thrust.[1][2] Analogous to pedal to the metal. Not related to the term balls-out, which refers to a ball governor on a steam engine.[3] Neither balls-out nor balls to the wall is connected with the vulgar sense of balls (“testicles”) except via folk etymology.

EDIT: The GTA audio in question (the song itself used the phrase satirically, and the announcer does as well):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWwG6RJrLA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balls_to_the_Wall_(album)

Balls to the Wall is the fifth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released in 1983. It is Accept's only record to attain Gold certification in the US.[1] The album's title track became Accept's signature song and remains a metal anthem and trademark in the genre.

more of a misheard lyrics, but the song "The Freshmen" by the Verve Pipe hits a bit different if you thought they were singing:

For the life of me, I cannot remember What made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise For the life of me, I cannot believe We'd ever die for these sins, we were merely flesh then

In Sweden we have this expression:

"Måla inte fan på väggen" - "Don't paint the devil on the wall"

It simply menas to stop worrying and get on with it.

I have added stuff to it twice.

First time:

"Måla inte fan på väggen fören han står i farstun" - "Don't paint the devil on the wall until he stands in the hallway"

This means, stop worrying, and get on with it, but if shit happens, be sure to document it.

Second time:

"Måla inte fan på väggen fören han står i farstun, men det skadar inte att ha färgen hemma" - "Don't paint the devil on the wall until he stands in the hallway, but it doesn't hurt to keep the paint ready"

This means, stop worrying, and get on with it, but be ready to document it if shit hit the fan.

I honestly like "milk toast" over milquetoast.

I always thought of it being so plain or bland having it made sense. Rather than a reference to a 1920s comic character.

Also, it doesn't really fit but a coworker uses the phrase

"we'll burn that bridge when we get to it"

This is more of a fix of two phrases which is we'll cross that bridge when we get to it and don't burn your bridges.

When I was a kid I thought the expression, the coast is clear, was actually, the ghost is clear, which makes sense that the ghost would be transparent but had nothing to do with a situation being safe enough to proceed with whatever you were doing. But I'm originally from Texas, where we have tons of idioms and colloquialisms that don't make sense, so I just went with it.

For the traditional toe the line imagery, it helps to imagine a very rebellious kid that you have firmly told to absolutely not cross some line under any circumstances.

Imagine the kid looking you dead in the eye and smirking, as they stretch out their big toe and put it all over the line while barely not crossing it.

This captures the aspect that you don't have to follow the spirit of the rules or believe in them in any way, you simply have to follow the letter of the instruction to be "toeing the line". There is an inherent malicious coloring to the term that is important, where people that only toe the line are bad people.

edit: It needs to imply that you're searching for ways to break a rule and get away with it on a technicality.

edit2: This got me curious enough to google the origin of the term, and it actually has a wikipedia article, amusingly. Apparently it has a military origin, and the article makes no mention of the negative connotations I mentioned. This makes me think my personal interpretation is actually incorrect, and I now wonder why I picked up on it. In the US, toeing the line does have a subtle negative connotation to it, and people that do it are looked down on somewhat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

When I was young, I thought it was "Make ends meat". Like poor cuts of meat, because you have no money.

Instead of having money left over by the time you get paid again.

"Aged like fine milk"

Its supposed to be about wine and how it improves with time. However, especially when discussing old media, I like my version as it can mean its spoiled or turn to cheese, interprite as needed

Example,

The movie "Kung-Pow: Enter the Fist" has aged like fine milk.

Is the movie bad for its dated crappy matrix references or is it peak early 2000s cheese. Vote now on your phones.

better than keeping a foot on some fucking line

TBF, avoiding going over a certain line is hugely important across dozens of significant disciplines and areas. It's literally critically and vitally important in many cases. As for "toe," it's probably an old-school usage of a verb which is preserved in that phrase, but not carried on otherwise. Making it sound weird, today.

"It's like apples and oranges!"

I think I probably misunderstood that one from the start. Far as I know the real meaning is simply "similar, yet different."

But in my head I was asking myself: "so they're both fruit, both roundish, both commonly the same size, both sweet-tasting, both common lunch items, both hugely cultivated, both widely sold, both inexpensive, both pretty healthy & nutritious... etc, etc... so then, you're trying to tell me that they're vastly more similar than dissimilar?! What??

I like that imagery better than keeping a foot on some fucking line. Plus using toe as a verb is dumb.

When I was a kid, the school gymnasiums had many different painted lines, delineating boundaries for basketball courts and other games. Gym teachers would often start activities by getting the students to line up on one of these lines, a position from which we could all see what the teacher wanted to demonstrate. We'd put our toes on the line. We would literally "toe the line." That's not a metaphor, not an imaginary image. I would guess common usage comes from the military more than from gym class.