Re: USAGE: Cool idioms (was Re: Bibliography)

On Sat, 27 Mar 1999, Danny Wier wrote:

> khaT@v@ Nik Taylor:
>
> >Well, from a native English speaker, here's one that I think is rare.
> >I've only heard it from my mother, so I don't know if it's a Kansan
> >expression (she grew up there), or a family idiom, or what, but anyhoo,
> >here goes "On the second Tuesday of next week"
>
> Here's a few from my mother (who's of Texas-Louisiana extraction):
>
> "Gone to Dallas after a load o' goats."
>   (Means that the speaker doesn't know where someone is.)
>
> "Turkey squat behind the wash pot, left a greasy spot."
>   (Means that somebody made a mess.)
>
Well, if we're going to go into animal idioms ...
My mother told this one to me a couple of weeks back, and is an idiom one
of her aunts used (probably with some frequency, as that generation of my
family were all musical):

"That's the tune the old cow died on at the gate."  Which is what she
would say of any tune or song that didn't meet with expectations.

Padraic.

> Danny