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Monday, September 8, 2014

Earring 0190 - Idioms

We grew up with idioms. What did I just say? Yes, we grew up with idioms not that anyone I know uses that word. An idiom does not necessarily mean what the words in the phrase mean. A great example of that is from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/idiom, "It is raining cats and dogs" meaning that it is raining hard. It also means "linguistic usage that is grammatical and natural to native speakers of a language", which I understand a little better. So United States is a melting pot so there are many native speakers of languages so you will have idioms from around the world? One would think that but I'm not sure.

Phrases we grew up with were:
  • A penny in the hand is worth two in a bush.
  • Don't count the chickens until the eggs hatch.
  • It's raining cats and dogs.
  • A dime a dozen.
  • One of my mom's favorites "a taste of your own medicine."
  • How many times as a kid did you cry when you spilled milk and they said "don't cry over spilled milk." The only time I ever heard that though was when my sister or I spilled milk.
  • As for my mom's cooking, she used "everything but the kitchen sink" and she was a fantastic cook who could make something out of nothing.
  • And how many mornings did I hear, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed again. (My bed was against the wall.)
  • Hell in a handbasket is where the world has been going for years and sometimes that is where I was headed when I didn't listen to my parents.
  • Mum's the word when my aunt went off the road back in the 60s while driving my mom, my sister and I. We weren't supposed to tell anyone but I couldn't keep it a secret from my dad. Maybe my mom said "I smell a rat."
  • "Would you kids please pipe down, I can't hear myself thinking" was frequently used in our home. Usually that was at bedtime when we were supposed to be quiet.
  • Consoling me, my mom would say, it's water under the bridge...let bygones be bygones.
  • Mom wouldn't eat corn because pigs eat corn and you are what you eat.
You can check out the following for more idioms http://www.idiomsite.com/

Today's earrings