Funny little colloquial phrases

Reminded me of the teacher at my primary school who said, ‘Empty vessels make the most noise,’ practically every day.

MOnica & Jocork
Thanks for the info . Amazing I've never made the link! Still pondering & learning. Interesting it's become a Geordie phrase.

Recently moved South to naval country; I was having a light hearted conversation & said to a man " I'll wave my bucket at you" - a charity bucket for Alzheimer's.
A colleague said; "Ooh you can't say that!" Apparently, your bucket is quite different down here.

nanna8 that was one my grandmother used and I use to this day.

She also used to describe someone making a fuss about a minor medical problem as having 'All the ills that nobody dies of'. She also used the phrase to ward off enquiries about her own health, saying that she had 'all the ills that nobody dies of'

Again I still use it.

Funny one I heard from a work colleague was "if he had two brain cells he wouldn't make a tomato" He was really cross with a lad at work who had made lots of errors and caused a lot of problems ?

Now the meaning of that one completely eludes me!

Daft as a brush is another one. Why is a brush daft? Maybe I am!

Ro60 are you sure he wasn’t winding you up?
I’ve lived down South ( so far down I could have fallen off) I never heard anything else being referred to as a bucket, of course if it’s a Naval slang term, then I wouldn’t.

Isn’t it strange, I grew up hearing a lot of these phrases from my Aunts and Uncles.
Anyway a new one for you amongst our friends (and maybe in the wider U.K.) if something isn’t as old as it looks, we say that ‘it’s as old as Triggers broom’
I’m sure most of us know where that came from!

If you can’t fight , wear a big hat. ?

Of a skinny person, ‘there’s more fat on a hens top lip’

Also “I’ve seen more fat on a butcher’s pencil”

Oopsadaisy you're probably in politer circles. ? It's from Portsmouth ?
Trying to keep up with the youngsters - everything's 'Wicked'

I was so cross I could've shaken the spit out of him (or her)

Get your parrots and monkeys together and let's be going.

Roy Castle, when meeting Margaret Thatcher after she'd been deposed and was planning to retire. "You could tell the ladder didn't quite reach the attic."
I'm assuming this was her insipient dementia.

If you don't do as your told, it's down the coal mines for you. (said to me as a child - totally ineffective, I never did do as I was told)

'It's like Blackpool Illuminations in here'.
'Stop yer skriking'.
'It's chapel hat pegs out there' is a personal favourite!

My step dad, who was from Yorkshire, used to say “Smile and kill another donkey” .... meaning cheer up.
I’ve never heard anyone else use this phrase and I’ve no idea where it comes from.
It’s part of our family folklore now !

Smile while you’ve still got teeth.

One of my mother’s sayings, often said to one of her rowdy 5 children, that I still use now.

Dinna fash yersel

My granddad common exclamations used to be:

"Good gardenstuff!"
"Love o' Reilly".

And in our family we used to say (well, in fact, it's only me who says it now)

"You are a date" A mildly affectionate expression meaning you are a silly person". I have never heard anyone use this expression since and wonder if it was just a family thing.

I don't get

About as useful as a t* on a nun

When I was growing up, someone who was showy-offy but with no real wealth was described as being "all kippers and curtains". My dad, on seeing a skinny girl in a mini skirt, was heard to say "Gawd, you couldn't bend a pipe cleaner that shape".

And Eloethan, "soppy date" was used, as you say, in a mildly affectionate way in our family and neighbourhood (North London council estate).

Said generally to a young person of the female persuasion who was making an unnecessary fuss about a small facial blemish
“ you had better get up the dancers (stairs) else it will be a pig’s foot by morning.”

Reading the posts on this thread it’s fascinating to see which part of the country they came from.

gulligranny Oh, so it is a real saying then. My Mum and her family lived in various places around London so it's probably a London saying then.

I was born just outside York and my Gran used to say "It's black over Bills mothers" - so isn't just a Midlands saying as Nannarose mentioned. I didn't think of it as a saying as my Uncle Bill ,who lived with my Gran, had family not far away so thought it was black in the direction of his Mums!

Fair suck of the sauce bottle = give them a fair go. We use that quite often still.

As black as Noogits knocker ( as black as Newgates knocker)

Like a fart in a colander