Made-up Sayings

I am a Liverpudlian where odd sayings were everywhere. My mum who died at 50 was an amazing character and when anything really annoyed her she would exclaim “suffering ice cakes” I am at an age when I sit and recall my childhood but I still do not know what ice cakes were and why they were suffering! I have looked it up on the net but no answers! I love threads like this.

A favourite of my mother’s was, when we were looking for something that she could see, “If it had a tongue, it would bite you.” My Mum said "if it was a dog it would have bitten you".

One mealtime our daughter wanted to tell everyone at the dinner table a "big story" that happened to her that day. She was about 10 at the time. We all waited in great anticipation. She proceeded to tell us that a duck had flown down into the playground at school that day. Me, my DH and her two older brothers all burst into laughter. We'd been expecting a lot more. From that day onwards if anyone of us tells a pretty pointless take it is labelled A Duck Story.

Tale not take!

#Gingster So did mine and I remember asking her how a man with no arms could get his money out his pockets.

The other one was 'cook's privilege' ie whoever made the french toast, baked the biscuits etc always got first refusal of the last one even if someone else wanted it.

If we couldn't find something as children and my Mum located it she would say " You must have looked with your elbows"

My Mum and Dad, if it was very warm used to call it ‘arry ‘otters, my eldest daughter as a small child thought it was farmer Christmas, the whole family still use both.

And my dad said the same and so I waited for us to have a dog but never happened ...
I’m thinking of getting a dog now though

If my mother thought someone was trying to suggest she was stupid or naive, she would to say “I’m not as green as I’m cabbage looking”. She also used to to say "It's looking a bit black over Bill's mother's”, meaning that it would probably rain soon. Someone once told me that Bill referred to William Shakespeare. Mum's family came from the Midlands and Staffordshire. Something that was better than nothing was "better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick". If Mum was particularly surprised by something she used to say "Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs". I've never been able to see any meaning behind that saying.

My Nan’ and then my Mum, would always say on a cloudy day when you could see small patches of sky........’There’s enough blue to make a pair of sailors trousers’

Just like Lizzie44 mum my dear aunt say when she was surprised “well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs”, she said her mum used to say it.

My son, bilingual in Spanish, used to say adiós-byebye when he was little to cover his bets and it's now a habit between us all. Another was "all dark, es pronto papa" as he was carried off to the day nursery at 7.15am.

My mum's answer to 'What's for dinner?' was 'Iffit' - that is 'if it goes all round you can have some'!

When asked what's for supper, my husband always told the kids 'mudgeon with gudgeon sauce'.

In Birmingham, if we had gone on a long journey, particularly if you had taken some wrong turns, we would say “ I’ve been round the Wrekin”. When I get older I learned that The Wrekin was a hill in Worcestershire. Many years later I was late for a meeting, with colleagues from all around West Midlands I apologised and said “I’ve been round the Wrekin”. A colleague from Worcester said”Gosh. You have had a long journey”

‘The gun’ is what we called the remote when the children lived here. A strange look would go over the faces of their uninitiated friends when the call went out and cushions were being looked behind.

When the children were little and money was tight, if one of them asked what was for dinner I'd say "bitter stew", meaning I'd cleared the fridge out and thrown "a bit of this and a bit of that" into the pot

My gran as she got older was very wary when making a cup of tea and never filled it to the top in case she spilt it. So we had a saying in our family, if someone gave us a short measure of tea, "that's a granny Margaret cuppa". We still say this to this day, and it even caught on with all my work colleagues!

My Dad used to say Tommy arters for tomatoes. He was a Londoner.

if our dad went out and us children chorused where's he going? our mum would always say 'he's gone to see a man about a dog!'.........we didn't ever have a dog!

If my Grandma made something that turned out less than perfect she would say, "Oh well, a blind man would be glad to see it."

If we were out in town and my Dad spotted a public toilet he would shout out to Mum, "I'm just going to hold my own." She'd cringe!

Mum's favourite saying was, "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well."
She was a perfectionist and that's stuck with me ever since.

"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well."

My Dad used to say that.

He also called asparagus "sparrers' grass"

After my honeymoon in the South of France, my mother said “Oh, how lovely to see St. Toupee” and a loaf which started off as Mighty White became in turn, Mighty Mouse then Mickey Mouse.
Len Faircloth was how she pronounced the Coronation Street character.
I do so miss her mixups.

When the dc were little and told to put their pjs on, they used to say “I’m going to get unchanged” which sounds rather biblical. Their Uncle Bill was always Uncle Bull as he had a farm.
My best friend uses the expression “Since Dick docked” i.e. a long time and I’m “out of control” if I can’t find the remote.
My Italian friend, when overcharged, paid through her ears.
I loved reading about the Mitford’s nanny, who to discourage vanity and shyness always told the girls ‘No one will be looking at you”
On Diana Mitford’s wedding day, she went to show nanny her wedding dress and guess what she said??

Ours was 'smart as a half scraped carrot' when we were dressed up to go out. Never heard it anywhere else though ?

If my grandmother was asked "whats for dinner?" she would say "dry bread and pull it.

When asked where we were going my mum used to say "there and back to see how far it is"