“Bad Cess”

For what it’s worth, “bad cess” has me flashing back not to FO’B but to the Black Velvet Band (“Her eyes, they shone like diamonds…” etc).

Bloix, we sang Paddy on the Railway in elementary school, NJ 1950’s. Though I don’t remember the “bad cess” part.

My Montana father, when truly disgusted, would say, “Oh, sheep dip.” I’ve always liked that one.

A woman raised in Virginian Appalachia who sometimes (like on rainy days) gave me a ride (and her daughter) a ride to school would always say as the car slowed in front of the school yard, “Here ye be.”

My father once remarked that the south end of a north-going fat woman in pedal-pushers reminded him of two shoats in a tow sack. Not original with him, I’m sure, as he spent much of his childhood on my hillbilly great-grandmother’s East Tennessee farm. I wonder if the expression could be traced back to Ulster, where that part of the family family originated. I’d guess not, but the flavor is definitely reminiscent of somebody or other’s old country.

So I’ve always thought that “bad cess” used the same “cess” as in “cesspool.” A glance at the OED seems to indicate that the dates work out, but the OED points to “cess” derived from “success,” which I don’t see, and this definition of “cess,” which I find a bit more plausible, “2. Ireland. The obligation to supply the soldiers and the household of the lord deputy with provisions at prices ‘assessed’ or fixed by government; hence loosely used for military exactions generally. Obs. exc. Hist.”

I once speared an extra potato cake at my grandfather’s breakfast table, and my Aunt Frances said, in her lovely Dublin lilt, “Ah, Paddy, anyone would think the wolf was at your door.” Maybe not unique, but memorable.

The Curse of Scotland could also be union with England, it occurs to me, though ending up in a Glaswegian slum is not much to look forward to.

Least said, soonest mended — on the virtues of keeping your mouth shut.
What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over — on the benefits of not looking too closely/ignorance is bliss

Among card players the nine of diamonds is called the Curse of Scotland.

Why? Who knows?

Here are three expressions from Ireland: “if’ ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers”; “a gang of tinkers such as you wouldn’t [even] find at a Donegal Horse Fair”; and “near every man’s door there grows a thorn bush”.

I’m sure I got the first from my mother, who was Irish, but I’m not so sure about the others. That last is interesting, because it has several layers:-

– Near every man’s door there grows a thorn bush. This has three several meanings.

– Near every man’s door there grows a thorn bush. This is a simple practical-botanical observation that applies in that part of the world.

– Near every man’s door there grows a thorn bush. This means that you will always find the makings of a shillelagh ready to hand, as you can improvise one from the roots of the blackthorn bush (however, Robert Graves noted in The White Goddess that tinkers made their shillelaghs from oak, as they could take the time and trouble to make them in advance). This was certainly relevant in my mother’s family; when my mother returned from the wars in 1945, her father greeted her at the door armed with a shillelagh, since those were troubled times then in France (to which the family had found it convenient to emigrate immediately after the First World War – yes, that means what you think it means).

– Near every man’s door there grows a thorn bush. This is a metaphor for everyone always being close to the realms of the Leprechauns and the Cluricauns and the People of the Shee, which were symbolised by the thorn bush.

From my father, who was a Scot, I heard the saying “we’ll never get rich taking in each other’s washing”.

My uncle would always say, when asking if someone was still alive that he hadn’t heard from in a while, a common question in rural Ireland, would say “Is s/he still to be had?” Which I always found yo be a very interesting use of tenses.
My father will often say when asking for luck or something to be a success will say “In the name of the three snotty orphans!”

“Chap” is also used (or was, a couple of generations ago) as a synonym for child in the Appalachians.

@ Bloix 13:
Quebecois’ native profanity was based upon Catholic litany and holy objects; thus “Tabernac”, “calisse” and the like. Even though Quebec society is now strongly secular, this peculiar form of profanity seems to be hanging on.

PS- if you do an Ngram on good success, bad success, you’ll see that both were common in the 17th & 18th c and that both decline markedly in the 19th c. Bad success disappears almost entirely by 1900. But Milton used it in Paradise Regained, and it seems to have been fairly commonly used to mean ill-fortune.

My British father always had it as “eat a Chinaman’s arse through a cane chair”.

Political correctness says we can’t even joke about eating the Chinese. It’s liberal tyranny.

#21- Shinola was a brand of shoe polish. The idea being that you were so stupid that you’d – well, you get it already.

PS I’ve always liked the insult “I wouldn’t piss in his ear if his brains were on fire”.

For those with an overbite and projecting teeth: He/She could eat an apple through a tennis racket.

“Get out and let the wind blow the stink off ya,” is a family saying to tell kids to go play outside for a while. I think it came from my Irish-American grandmother. (Although usually that activity had the opposite effect.)

“Tabernac”, “sacre bleu”, and “moi je de christ” were common swear words in northern NYS near the border with Quebec, when I grew up there.

“Many hands make light work,” said my grandfather, who hailed from Clare, as he sat in the chair and watched everyone else work.

“If the wind turns as you make that face, you’ll be frozen like that forever,” said my mother, a Dubliner.

Black cat crossing the road was good luck.

My grandmother would run to bring in the laundry anytime she saw the Tinkers down the road in their horse-drawn cart.

As children, we used to obsessively listen to the Dubliners play “There was an old woman who lived in the woods…” about a wicked old woman who killed a baby in the woods. http://bit.ly/1maf6Mm Lyrics a far cry from today’s Wiggles, etc.

From the National Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings, back in the day: “If looks could maim, the old elf would have left in a basket.”

Still cracks me up.

Don’t even know what sense can be made of it, but when faced with something that must be done I am inclined to say “Needs must when the devil drives.” My mother was Irish.

My dad has always been fond of the expression “good as new, if your new ain’t too good” – used, for example, when doing an amateur repair job on a house, car, etc.

floopmeister @25
Never heard that – excellent.

My grandmother, from rural Tennessee, would snap at us grandchildren when we misbehaved, “I’m going to beat you so hard, you’ll land in the middle of next week!” I realized some years later that it was just a figure of speech.

My grandmother (born 1889) used to say of children who were bragging about what they were going to do, “oh, you’re going to cut a pig in the pants.” I knew what she meant by that, but never figured why that phrase would describe having bigger ideas than you could ever carry out. She was from Utah…

Heard in Ireland, of a man with no understanding at all of how machinery worked:

“The sort of idiot who would play Russian roulette with an automatic pistol”.

I can also attest to “blow the stink off you” for getting children outdoors, from my same grandmother. Particularly as a justification for getting even an infant outdoors once a day at least even in the middle of winter.

A friend of mine says, when hungry, “I could eat the crotch out of a low flying duck”, but my family’s saying was always “I could eat a horse, and chase the rider”. There are lots of saying I consider to be Australian, but of course they probably have shared histories. Of someone needlessly showy in their dress or accoutrements: “He’s as flash as a rat with a gold tooth”. Of someone stupid, “He’s as thick as pigshit and that’s too thick to stir”. Of someone parsimonious, “Mean as cat’s meat, too mean to smell”.

My wife (a South African) uses “since Pa fell off the bus,” which seems to mean a long time ago. Also “looks like he/she walked through a bush backwards” for someone untidy, especially untidy hair.

Re shinola: In Steve Martin’s THE JERK, Martin is raised by a black farm family but doesn’t know he’s white. Before leaving home, his father tells him he has one more lesson to teach hi. He leads Martin into a field, looks down, and says, “This is shit.” Then he takes a can of shoe polish from his pocket and says, “and this is shinola.”

When my Dad hit his thumb with a hammer, to avoid cursing he’d holler, “Got down and couldn’t get up!” JG

Or to describe one’s own state of being.

My father, who is Irish-Canadian, would avoid cursing with “God bless my soul.” My mother who is a Scotch-Canadian would just say, “Bullshit.”

As for African Americanisms, one of my favorites came when I was working construction, and the foreman yelled at me and another college kid, who was black, for something or other. As Bruno was walking away, Kevin muttered, “I don’t play that shit.”

Sorry, but I-Pad auto-correct takes you for a descendant of the Baroque master, I guess.

Mom’s Texas sayings: in response to naughtiness: “Stop that or I’m going to snatch you bald headed!”
or “…I’m going to get your good eye!”
Laziness: “don’t just sit there like a bump on a pickle”
From my Illinois father, strongly encouraging us: “Now you’re cooking with gas!”
My Croatian grandmother called us a name I’d really like to know the origin of when we tried to carry too much at one time, which I remember being told was from a story where a man with this name got in trouble for this behavior. It sounded like “chotzo”.

“Who’s taking the horse to France?” which, I do believe, was in reference to the forced exile of a large and vociferous woman of Huguenot origin.

Here in France, if someone is indiscreet, they say “he’d talk about rope in the house of the hanged man” (“il parle de la corde dans la maison du pendu”.)

A friend of mine from the US used to say “if ifs and buts were candied nuts we’d all have a hell of a Christmas”.

“He was out with the dry cows” — as in he stayed out late/all night
“Ratchet-jawing” — as in talking or carrying on a conversation, but with a slight pejorative overtone
“Rat-killing” -as in doing chores/running errands
“Jump the broomstick” — as in get married
“Caddywhompus” (sp?)–as in something askew, uneven or off-kilter

“Commode”– as in toilet. Growing up in my deep south Scots-Irish (and English) family we mostly used the word commode. It wasn’t until I was quite a bit older and no longer in the south that I realized that no one else anywhere seemed to use that term. Then a few years ago I learned (don’t remember where) that it is commonly used in Ireland.

I would spell that word ‘catawhompas’, but not with any great degree of certainty. It’s useful, though. Many, many things in my life are catawhompas on a regular basis.

I don’t know where my parents picked this up — it sounds modern urban American — but ‘crazy as a rat in a coffee can’ is a nicely evocative way of describing someone who’s behaving erratically.

My paternal grandmother, who was born in Italy, grew up in Brooklyn, and lived the rest of her long adult life in northeastern Ohio, called that part of the bird the Pope’s nose. Go figure.

Wikipedia says, among other things:

“Pygostyle” is of Ancient Greek origin, literally meaning “rump pillar”.

“Sultan’s nose” probably was coined some time during the Early Modern era wars against the Ottoman Empire.[citation needed]

Some more sayings that memory is dredging up:

You’re running around like a chicken with her head cut off, said my mother, who would see chickens get their head cut off when visiting her grandmother on the farm in Tullamore.

If you’ve got a black spot on your tongue, you’ve been lying.

“Do ye like tea?!” A fact which could be proved if the squeeze of your knee made you squirm from the tickle.

My grandfather had a great horror of any spots on his spuds, which I think was a reflexive memory of the famine – his family survived in an area that was quite devastated by it. I had never heard of ‘hungry grass” though.

Cat crossed your grave – if you shivered for no reason.

And of course, the cry of the banshee meant death was near.

74: I learned “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” from my grandmother, from India. (I’ve never thought to ask her where it came from.)

“Not the sharpest tool in the shed” was one I learned in Wisconsin; “sharp as a sack of wet mice”, to the same effect, from a class-mate from New England.

Two of my mother’s which have served me well are “why think, when you can do the experiment?” and “to be shot after a fair trial”, said of something or someone dubious who cannot be dismissed out of hand (yet). Again, I don’t know where she got them.

I was very interested to see that use of the word “chap.” Growing up in rural Southern Virginia, children were called “chaps.” In fact, I don’t recall hearing them called kids until I moved away. No one says chaps for children anymore (well, except for my mother), but it was a very common expression here 40 years ago.

Here’s a couple I like that my father used to use, both in response to questions that he deemed irrelevant:
“Don’t worry about the mule going blind, just keep on loading the wagon.”
“If you’re writing a book, just leave that chapter out.”

To Cosma @ 76, I have a feeling that is a universal phrase where there are chickens with chopped heads. So fun to learn that something my mother brought to her America from her Irish grandparents, you learned from YOUR grandmother in India!

“Commode” is still used for, well, commodes in hospitals and long term care facilities, the mobile ones that can be wheeled to the beds. The alabaster thrones of the British (that’s James Joyce) remain “toilets.”

One from Iowa: “dumb as a sack of hammers.”

Indiana or Michigan, I forget which, “If your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle,” which sounds pretty Hibernian to me.

From an Irish college roommate I heard, “I have to piss like a race horse.”

From a roommate from Arkansas I heard, “Now that just makes my ass chew gum.”

My grandfather—a Washington D.C. native of some Irish ancestry—would say of someone who was full of hot air, “He talks like a man with a paper asshole.”

“All hat and no cattle” is a less crude expression of the same sentiment, I gather.

“Do we need a brick shit-house to fall on your head?” (i.e., when are you going to behave properly) — My good ol’ Grandmom.

Bad cess?

A friend of mine once referred to a loathsome, obstreperous person as a “rectal abscess”.

(I immediately replied, “Does abscess make the farts grow louder?”)

Peter T, much as I am ashamed to say, probably some of my ancestors were there with Cromwell, but they also said, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” and they shared snatches of rhyme, “higgledy-piggeldy” — also, fi-fi-fo-fum. Added to in my generation: I smell smoke in the auditorium.

Thinking of songs we used to sing in the car on trips to visit relatives (that’s what vacations were all about). One of the many, Love, oh love oh careless love. “Now I wear my apron high… and he never ever passes by.” At a pretty young age, I took in what that meant. Then there was, “Wearing bell-bottom trousers and coat of navy blue, he can climb the riggin’ like his daddy use to do.” Somehow I feel like these songs (of which I am sure I only heard a snatch of the huge array that must be out there) are vitally related to this post.

It’s not really a saying, but I was just talking with a friend today about the phrase ‘hoo-roo’ as a way of saying goodbye. It was more commonly used when I was a child than it is today, and is more of a country saying in Australia than a city saying, and more of a man’s saying than a woman’s saying. I am quite fond of it because it rhymes and I was always quite jealous of ‘how now?’ as a way of saying hello that rhymes.

Stone the [flaming]crows, and she’ll be apples are also common(ish) sayings. When I was little I had books of contemporary vernacular Australian children’s sayings and rhymes by June Factor who went around collecting them: Far Out, Brussel Sprout!; Alright, Vegemite!; and Unreal, Banana Peel! She wrote others too.

I always wished we had more sayings than we do, because in books country people always have lots more dialect or vernacular sayings – like in The Secret Garden wick means the plants are coming back to life, or in Playing Beattie Bow the children were called bairns, and in Cloudstreet which is not a children’s book the children playing were ‘skylarking’.

The Northern Italian rural phrase for being incredibly hungry – where we would say “he could eat a horse” – apparently translates as “he could eat a bishop”. Which either says something about the reverence of the average Italian peasant for the clergy (only a starving man could think of committing such a terrible act) or something about the average size of an Italian bishop.

“For Africa”, used to denote a quantity of stuff which is much more than you need. This comes up most often when the waiter delivers a gross, American-sized portion of food: “Sweetie, you have food there for Africa.”

“Eat up! There are children starving in China!” my grandmother used to tell my mother. Simultaneously, according to “Wild Swans”, the young Jung Chang was being told by her mother “Eat up! Don’t you know there are children starving in the capitalist world?”

The Curse of Scotland: the Dalrymple arms is azure on a saltire or nine lozenges of the first. In other words, nine diamonds. Which explains the playing card, maybe. Though my first association of The Curse of Scotland (a phrase dating back at least to 1700) is something like the Archbishop of Glasgow’s response to the reivers.

I denounce, proclamis, and declaris all and sindry the committaris of the said saikles murthris, slauchteris, brinying, heirchippes, reiffis, thiftis and spulezeis, oppinly apon day licht and under silence ofnicht, alswele within temporale landis as kirklandis; togither with thair partakeris, assitaris, supplearis, wittandlie resettaris (knowing receivers) of thair personis, the gudes reft and stollen be thaim, art or part thereof, and their counsalouris and defendouris, of thair evil dedis generalie CURSIT, waryit, aggregeite, and reaggregeite, with the GREIT CURSING.
I curse their heid and all the haris of thair heid; I curse thair face, thair ene, thair mouth, thair neise, thair tongue, thair teeth, thair crag, thair shoulderis, thair breist, thair hert, thair stomok, thair bak, thair wame*, thair armes, thais leggis, thair handis, thair feit, and everilk part of thair body, frae the top of their heid to the soill of thair feet, befoir and behind, within and without.. [and so on at great and comprehensive length]

Here’s a whole gallery of fine Yiddish curses. I especially like “May all your teeth fall out, except one to give you a toothache.”

With the commode/jakes/outhouse theme in mind:

“Never had a pot to piss in.”

..not *always* if we reffered to her in the third person. Mainly for the laughs.

From ZM: When I was little I had books of contemporary vernacular Australian children’s sayings and rhymes by June Factor who went around collecting them: Far Out, Brussel Sprout!; Alright, Vegemite!; and Unreal, Banana Peel! She wrote others too.

This reminds me of a saying of my other grandma’s, the one who lived in Pittsburgh for maybe a year of her life and otherwise in rural Ohio, a couple of hours from that city: “That’s it, Fort Pitt!”

A website of alleged Pittsburghese (and maybe this example is!) says:

That’s right or it’s all over. This comes from an old advertising slogan for Fort Pitt beer. (Submitted by Jeff Tuckfelt , Falls Church, VA)

Thinking of driving around rural Ohio as a child brings up memories of Burma Shave signs, which maybe kinda sorta fit this topic.

The only one I truly, literally remember — along with the curve in the country road where it was planted — was:

Cattle crossing
Please go slow
That old bull
Is some cow’s beau.

PJW @102: . . . nor a window to throw it out of.

William Berry@110…I’ve never heard that second part. Thanks!

Don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs.

The first time I read this one, I thought ‘why not?. Then I thought ‘why?!’.

Henry @95:

Sorry, I really meant nothing by my 85. Forty years in heavy industry has exposed me to a lot of hard-core good-old-boy “wisdom”. One of my USW brothers, in particular, could fill a book with his down-home expressions.

Some few of them might even be suitable for polite company!

Layman,

I think that grandma saying is like ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’.

Heard ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ re: economics policy making recently.

Often felt guilty as a child stepping on cracks in the footpath or quadrangle ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back’

Oh, wait. I missed ZM’s explanation. Not at all obvious, tho.

Ah! That makes more sense. Thanks!

“My eyeballs are floating”; need to urinate even worse.

“That guy is so full of crap it’s running out of his mouth/ ears, etc.”

First person: “Damn’, man, I have been so busy I haven’t had time to go”. Second person: “Why don’t you just break off a piece and throw it in?”

FP: “What the hell is that thing?” SP: “Looks like a piece off an airplane”. FP: “Really? How ya figure that?” SP: “Ain’t on one, is it?”

@113 Thanks, I’ve always wondered where that came from.

My (working-class Lancashire) grandparents always used the term “It’s a fair cop, guv” about someone being caught doing something wrong. It was generally used ironically- the phrase often came up in police testimony as a confession from the criminal, and my grandparents always assumed the coppers were lying to frame someone.

My grandfather couldn’t see a police car on the street without saying “If you want to know the time ask a policeman”, referring to the 19th Century song about the habits of police stealing watches from drunks.

In the 1690’s, when the status of Rye (of Connecticut? of New York?) was in hot dispute, and most of Rye would want to be part of CT though the royal authorities were insisting NY, the Westchester County Court of Sessions Minutes tell us: “Ebin Jones was summoned [by NY authorities] to serve Upon the Grand Jury by the Sherrif’s Warr[an]tt Directed to the Marchal of ye county who did deny to Serve: and told the Marshall the Sheriffe might Kiss his ** he would not Serve ye King in two places —-….” This is one of the more colorful examples of resistance in 1692 to New York’s claim to Rye. It also connects us to the spirit of resistance (and cautious accommodation) that so many of these saying display to power, and negotiate with it.

My grandmother was a Burma Shave author!

Within this vale
Of toil and sin
Your head grows bald
But not your chin.

Our family, Galway on my mother’s side and Cork on the father’s has always used “billy-be-damned” as an multipurpose expression.

@ Ronan, @ ZM

I understood the point of the expression, old dog new tricks, but couldn’t understand why anyone’s grandma would know how to suck eggs, or even want to.

Along the lines of CEFGW, a guy I know used to say ‘a man in an airplane will never see that’ when approving of poor craftsmanship.

Sucking eggs means to poke a small hole in each end and to remove the contents without breaking the shell – done for decorating Easter eggs. The idea is that your grandma’s been doing it since before you were born. See mansplaining.

from childhood not far from the New York/Quebec border –
“don’t give a tinker’s damn” was the couldn’t care less of the day.
If someone took a tumble the were described as going “ass over teacup”

#139-That’s what I’ve always thought. The butterflies are nice though. Do the Catholics of Ulster still paint FKB (F**k King Billy) on walls while the black Protestants paint FTP (F**k the Pope) on walls of disputed/shared areas, as I’d heard in the ’70’s? And on Billy, but nothing else, my mother always told me that her uncle kept a strange smelly covered pot of fermenting cheese/milk/cottage cheese on the home table to be spread on toast, or bread, or anything, I guess. He called it “Stinkin” Billy”. (Oh the “Black Prostetants” thing above comes from an Kerryman pastor, who one told me there are several Irish words for “black” one for the ordinary color, and one only used in modifying the “devil” and the “Protestants”. )–You are right about me fam’lies inclinations.

And apropos of nothing in the last two. As I always heard the expression, in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, it was always as a challenge to someone who was telling you to do something that they very well ought to have known you knew how to do better than they: “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs!” I still use it.

Where I grew up (northeastern Ohio), it was “Slow as molasses in January.”

Molasses isn’t always slow, though.

Here’s a song about it. (Not a great rendition, or at least not well-recorded.)

OK, I can’t resist – the male side of my family collects colorful sayings. My brother is fond of cattywumpus, which he defines as “slantendicular”. Also, “absquatulate” for taking off.

One of my father’s prize specimens is “went through that like green corn through the new maid”

There was an Iranian expression that went “colder than a well-digger’s ass”. They had a lot of qanats, a combination tunnel-well system that let them collect irrigation water. The use of the things for a very long time had put so much salt into the ground that it was hard to grow anything where they were.