Singin' "hey diddle diddle" with your kitty in the middle

[venta]

Over on her own journal, quisalan's been asking people for phrases they use which no one else knows. I know I've become infamous for these, so I'm not going to demonstrate again that I live on another planet from everyone else.

However, cryx suggested the rather marvellous "That won't get the baby ironed", an amalgam of "That won't get the baby bathed" and "That won't get the shirts ironed". Which reminded me that running two proverbs together has produced some of my favourite phrases ever.

I first became aware of this as a concept during an episode of, er, My Word, I think - something featuring Frank Muir, anyway. One of those involved was talking about his mother-in-law's habit of confusing proverbs, and gave the following examples:

That gets right up my goat (= That gets my goat + That gets right up my nose)
The ball's on the other foot now (= The ball's in your court + The boot's on the other foot now)

I immediately adopted them as my own.

Another one I encountered quite recently is the winceworthy statement of intention to get on with something, provided for me by JdB:

I must get my teeth to the grindstone (= I must get my teeth into it + nose to the grindstone). Though why putting any part of your face to the grindstone is supposed to be beneficial is a bit of a mystery.

The best bit about these is that (to me, anyway) their meaning is immediately apparent, even though they're not standard phrases. Whether this is from the context in which they're used, from the tone of voice, or from the ability of the hearer to untangle the two phrases is open to debate.

A fine set of candidates for this combination approach is the vast range of phrases which are used to indicate that someone has asked a stupid question, to which the answer is so obviously "yes" that it wasn't worth the asking.

The first one I remember knowing was "Do ducks swim?", used as follows:

A: Would you like a cup of tea?
B: Do ducks swim ?

Does a bear shit in the woods ?
Is the Pope a Catholic ?
Does Judith Charmers have a passport ?
Does the Trojan horse have a wooden willy ?

Great phrases all, but clearly inferior to, for example, asking whether ducks are Catholic or whether the Pope shits in the woods. My dad seems to have settled on "Is the Pope a duck ?" for his question of choice.

If anyone has any more variants, I'd be delighted to add them to the mix'n'match line-up.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the second half of that one comes from, or it would doubtless be funnier.

A friend of mine at secondary school was occasionally given to pointing out that "a rolling stone mixes no metaphors" - one of a few dozen based around the same basic theme (the rest you can reinvent for yourself).

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the second half of that one comes from

"Fair words butter no parsnips", i.e. actions speak louder than words.

Personally I like "Don't mix metaphors midstream" as a self-referential thingummajig*.

* thingummajig, n. A metasyntactic wossname.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the second half of that one comes from

Fine words butter no parsnips.

Which confused the hell out me when I was small, as it appeared to make no sense whatsoever.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Like, 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good'

To which my childhood response was 'Duh! Obviously it's an ill wind if it's not blowing anybody any good.'

And 'It's a snip at half the price'

Child Me: 'So, you're saying this would be a snip, but only if it cost half of what it costs now?'

[venta.livejournal.com]

Exactly :)

My mum had (probably still has) a habit of saying to my dad, if he was being rude: "You're rotten. And if rottens were a bob, you'd be a two-bob rotten".

I've now untangled this to mean that if the quality of being rotten-mean cost a shilling (a "bob"), my dad would have been the extra-rotten two-shilling edition. Unfortunately, since my dad is also called Bobb, this saying left me at sea for years.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can see that having a Dad called Bob(b?) would make that very confusing.

I bet your cousins have lots of fun telling each other 'Bob's your uncle!', though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, for historical reasons, he spells it Bobb. Or maybe it's just to be awkward :)

I also have an Uncle Bob. The long winter evenings just fly by :)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Everyone has an uncle Bob. In addition, the Trojan horse may not have had a wooden willy in case somebody got stuck in it, said "Help me! I've fallen down a horse's dick and I can't get out HA HA HA" and gave the whole game away.

Uncle Bob related saying (or possibly Uncle Bill) from my mum: "If he died, they couldn't cremate him".

We also used to have "I'm coming to see if you haven't drowned", which was what you said if you wanted to go to the loo when somebody was in the bath, because when my little brother was three he meant to say "I'm going to make sure my big sister hasn't drowned" but he got it wrong and we all thought it was very funny at the time.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

it appeared to make no sense whatsoever.

But it does give you something to do trying to prove it wrong while you're making roast dinners.