What's your favourite saying?

[Caliban]

What's your favourite saying?
Where did it come from?
Who would know if the answer is true?
Often we use sayings that we might not know the origin of. I've been wondering if we shouldn't post here the sayings we use and where they came from. The answers could be true or a good fabrication, who cares as long as they are feasible?
I'll start the ball rolling with one of my favourites about the cold.
"It'd freeze the balls of a brass monkey"
Evidently in the days of sailing ships of war, the cannon balls were kept on twin brass rails, which when the mercury dropped shrunk enough for the shot to roll off. Hence the saying. Is it true? I don't know, but I like the story.
There's another about English archers and the origin of a certain rude finger gesture, but I've had my share of deletions this week.
So, add your favourite saying and the explanation of its origin.

[ozwinner]

Heres my fave........
Dont push the send button twice!!


Al

[Zed]

favourite saying - "Hovo, you're a goose - get a broadband connection"

where it from ? I just made it up, do you like it ?

[Grunt]

Yeah, I wish Hovo would stop repeating himself.

[Ashore]

Sorry Hovo But
There is a story, often repeated, that the phrase originated in the British navy at the time of the Napoleonic wars or thereabouts. It is said that the stack of cannon balls alongside each gun were arranged in a pyramid on a brass plate to save space, the plate being called a monkey. In very cold weather, the story goes, the cannon balls would shrink and they would fall off the stack.

Don’t let anybody convince you of this. It’s rubbish. There’s no evidence that such brass plates existed. Although the boys bringing charges to the guns from the magazine were known as powder monkeys and there is evidence that a type of cannon was called a monkey in the mid seventeenth century, there’s no evidence that the word was ever applied to a plate under a pile of cannon shot. The whole story is full of logical holes: would they pile shot into a pyramid? (hugely unsafe on a rolling and pitching deck); why a brass plate? (too expensive, and unnecessary: they actually used wooden frames with holes in, called garlands, fixed to the sides of the ship); was the plate and pile together actually called a monkey? (no evidence, as I say); would cold weather cause such shrinkage as to cause balls to fall off? (highly improbable, as all the cannon balls would reduce in size equally and the differential movement between the brass plate and the iron balls would be only a fraction of a millimetre).

What the written evidence shows is that the term brass monkey was quite widely distributed in the US from about the middle of the nineteenth century and was applied in all sorts of situations, not just weather. For example: from The Story of Waitstill Baxter, by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1913): “The little feller, now, is smart’s a whip, an’ could talk the tail off a brass monkey”; and from The Ivory Trail, by Talbot Mundy (1919): “He has the gall of a brass monkey”. Even when weather was involved, it was often heat rather than cold that was meant, as in the oldest example known, from Herman Melville’s Omoo (1850): “It was so excessively hot in this still, brooding valley, shut out from the Trades, and only open toward the leeward side of the island, that labor in the sun was out of the question. To use a hyperbolical phrase of Shorty’s, ‘It was ’ot enough to melt the nose h’off a brass monkey.’ ”

It seems much more likely that the image here is of a real brass monkey, or more probably still a set of them. Do you remember those sculptured groups of three wise monkeys, “Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil”? Though the term three wise monkeys isn’t recorded earlier than the start of the twentieth century, the images themselves were known much earlier. It’s more than likely the term came from them, as an image of something solid and inert that could only be affected by extremes.
Not me but on the net


The trouble with life is there's no background music.

[Caliban]

Cool
I said I didn't know if it was true and still stand by that. I still like the idea of people telling their favourite sayings and in the spirit of this board spreading some fun around and offering believeable (or otherwise) explanations. Thanks for setting the record straight.
I don't know why the thread got posted twice I only pushed the send button once. That's what's so good about you guys, you're so forgiving. :eek:

[Zed]

actually My real favourite sayings are in no particular order :

well i'll be buggered

jebi se kurac

etc... hard to say really theres so many that make me laugh - I quite like some of the nasties that oz lets fly with... always get a chuckle at that and midgs deadpan wit can be laughsome. (my wife thinks im mad when she hears me bellowing..)

[craigb]

sheet a brick and have a square asre for a week.

It came from the old bloke who owned the servo that I had an after school job at when I was a kiddie.

[Ashore]

Mate when you said the brass monkey thing it triggered something I had read , Glad it didn't upset you as it was never meant to.

Lost Al in the ether someware but I agree, don't usually copy stuff straight from the net as it usually is a bit zzzzzzz.....

As to favorite sayings I think its "Trust not and you won't be dissapointed"
or "and your point is"


but SHMBO says its " Well just one more then"

hay whatever


The trouble with life is there's no background music.

[Pat]

Most of mine would have to be heavily edited, alot of adjectives are used at work to describe fellow employees(inmates) and the tools(useless pieces of faecal matter) that are issued to us. One I use to describe a very bad person/item is "Son of a motherless goat's rectum!" Which when used around my MBGitW, sends her into hysterics. I do not know were I have picked it up, but it is still able to be used in polite company . . .

Another long surviving curse is "Sod Off ski!"

There are so many sayings, but so much falls into impolite language, so these two will have to do for now.

[Landseka]

I like the old insult..."hope your earholes turn to rsoles and crap all over your shoulders".

And...."don't be a mug all your life, take 1/2 a day off".



Regards

Neil

[Fat Pat]

......Your Call is important to us"???

[ndru]

My favourite is one I overheard between what I think was were two Irish chefs chatting about exotic recipes...

"Whale oil beef hooked!"

[ozwinner]

.

Lost Al in the ether someware but I agree, don't usually copy stuff straight from the net as it usually is a bit zzzzzzz.....

Sorry
I was just trying an experimental post.
I didnt mean zzzzzzz, I could have typed 55555 or ......... or qqqqqq.
But z was the closest key to my finger.

Al

[Caliban]

Sorry
I was just trying an experimental post.
I didnt mean zzzzzzz, I could have typed 55555 or ......... or qqqqqq.
But z was the closest key to my finger.

Al

At least you didn't do it twice