Is there an American equivalent to "Lie back and think of England"?
"Yew gotta purty mouth. boy. Squeal lahk a pig."?
Oh, Good Lord, no. Just... no!!
Amusingly enough, my mother-in-law gave my wife this precise advice (verbatim) when we married. I hope that it was tongue-in-cheek. But she's an Anglophile, so it's no surprise...
I can think of similar phrases, but none with such a spectacular connotation. I'd just use it. Everyone with a decent imagination will know what it means.
I think 'Merikans are terrified of the subject in general, and hence have no such associated phrases.
The scariest thing is, I've been thinking about it for 5 minutes now and I'm beginning to think Squealer has the right of it...
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Yew gotta purty mouth. boy. Squeal lahk a pig."?
Oh, Good Lord, no. Just... no!!
Amusingly enough, my mother-in-law gave my wife this precise advice (verbatim) when we married. I hope that it was tongue-in-cheek. But she's an Anglophile, so it's no surprise...
I can think of similar phrases, but none with such a spectacular connotation. I'd just use it. Everyone with a decent imagination will know what it means.
I think 'Merikans are terrified of the subject in general, and hence have no such associated phrases.
The scariest thing is, I've been thinking about it for 5 minutes now and I'm beginning to think Squealer has the right of it...
It speaks volumes (about me) that I thought it meant to have grace under fire...until I read your post. I'm not sure whether I should be embarrassed by this...
Is there an American equivalent to "Lie back and think of England"?
I had heard it as "...think of the Queen."
I guess "... think of baseball." is the closest thing we yanks have.
What is hilarious is that phrase is sometimes attributed to Queen Victoria... QV 1.0 loved getting down and dirty with Prince Albert (think about what a Prince Albert is) had 9 kids and got very upset with a doctor who told her to slow down with the fornication.
Well, I was going to correct Andrew and tell him that "grace under fire" really is pretty good, but it's more, "Taking it with dignity."
Not quite Fergie's BOHICA, as that's someone intentionally screwing you over.
Then I looked at my post and thought to myself, "Oh, geez. I'm going to single-handedly get this thread locked through double-entendres...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"How can you lie there and think of England when you don't even know who's in the team?"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"How can you lie there and think of England when you don't even know who's in the team?"
It doesn't matter what team and who's on it.... England will always leave you feeling short changed and disappointed.
A country called Ol' Blighty by its own citizens has that effect.
"How can you lie there and think of England when you don't even know who's in the team?"
One of the great philosophical questions of the age, surely.
"How can you lie there and think of England when you don't even know who's in the team?"It doesn't matter what team and who's on it.... England will always leave you feeling short changed and disappointed.
Or, in this case, get knocked out in the quarter finals after a penalty shoot-out.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This one is well enough known over here not to need translation.
This one is well enough known over here not to need translation.
That's the conclusion i'm coming to.
Of course, I'm an avid, life-long Anglophile so I know and understand most of such adages.
British adages are neat. Swedish are better. :-)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Smaken är som röven - klöven.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
British adages are neat. Swedish are better. :-)
Only Swedish I know is Swedish Chef.
Han är inte mycket att hänga i julgranen - he's not much to hang in the christmas tree.
Det är ingen ko på isen - there isn't any cow on the ice.
Get ready to grab your ankles.
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.
Voulez vous coucher avec moi?
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.Voulez vous coucher avec moi?
.. means "would you like to fall unconcious with me on the same bed". Doesn't carry the same connotations in french. (or at leat it didn't used to)
British adages are neat. Swedish are better. :-)Only Swedish I know is Swedish Chef.
... there are other kinds?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
.. means "would you like to fall unconcious with me on the same bed". Doesn't carry the same connotations in french. (or at leat it didn't used to)This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.Voulez vous coucher avec moi?
That's just a side effect of the chloroform.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
A somewhat contemporary equivalent in the US during the mid-90s was "Beige....I'll paint the ceiling Beige."
It has no meaning without knowing the stand-up comedian joke behind it though. I forgot which comedian I should attribute it to, yet the following equivalent will be placed in spoiler format. I realize it's not in the least a polite joke (downright insensitive in many ways), just wanted to let everyone know where the reference is from to understand the phrase.
The Prostitute says, “Are you finished yet?”
The Mistress says, “Oh can’t we do it again?”
The Wife says, “Beige… I think I’ll paint the ceiling Beige.”
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.
One you do with somebody, one you do to somebody. Yea... Something like that.
A somewhat contemporary equivalent in the US during the mid-90s was "Beige....I'll paint the ceiling Beige."
It has no meaning without knowing the stand-up comedian joke behind it though. I forgot which comedian I should attribute it to, yet the following equivalent will be placed in spoiler format. I realize it's not in the least a polite joke (downright insensitive in many ways), just wanted to let everyone know where the reference is from to understand the phrase.
** spoiler omitted **
My mother used to tell that joke a lot.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Smaken är som röven - klöven.
Google Translate seems to think that means 'the taste is of the ass-hoof', which is very evocative, if slightly obscure to me. Perhaps we should just say that Sweden is a very broad-minded and liberal sort of country and leave it at that :-P
To lie: to rest or recline.
To lay: to put something down.
Video that is related, but does nothing to explain the difference.
That makes more sense...
This thread is hawt.
He's not much to hang in the christmas tree means something akin to he isn't somebody worth writing home about. There isn's any cow on the ice means there is no acute danger, calm down.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
"Heels to Jesus and think of handbags." ~ Karen Walker
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.
My wife has this on a coffee mug. I must have read it 100 times. I still don't remember.
I figured the fist meant something like that. The one about the cow was not so obvious. Either American cows are smarter than Swedish ones or the latter are depressed by the long dark winters to the point of attempting suicide by walking on thin ice. It's a coin-toss, probably.
They call Finland the land of a thousand lakes. Sweden has that outnumbered about 10:1. This country is full of water, drizzled with it, slathered in it. Every other or so swedish summer is "rainy", that means heavy rains a significant part of the majority of the days. If there is a dry week in August, we get headlines saying "Acute danger of drought!" We get a very large part of our energy from dams.
Ice is... a very frequent concept in winter, and cows don't need to be suicidal to end up on it.
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.My wife has this on a coffee mug. I must have read it 100 times. I still don't remember.
Just I, I lie.
A they, I lay.
(Lie is intransitive, and is a position one places oneself in. Lay is transitive, and can only be done to other objects.)
"Yew gotta purty mouth. boy. Squeal lahk a pig."?
Hey, that's my line!
But ain't yew a purty piggy!
True, I suppose.
This thread made me look up the rules of "lie" vs. "lay" again and I still don't think I've got it right.My wife has this on a coffee mug. I must have read it 100 times. I still don't remember.
A large part of the confusion is that the past tene of "to lie" is "lay."
present tense: "I am going to lie down now."
past tense: "When I lay in my bed last night..."
The past tense of the verb "to lay" is "laid."
present: "I'll just lay this book on the table."
past: "She laid her briefcase on the floor."
To further cloud the matter: It's not improper to use "lay" reflexively, with an object that refers back to the subject.
e.g. "Now I lay me down to sleep."
(Transitive verb "lay" with object "me," refers back to the subject "I". Equivalent in meaning to "Now I lie down to sleep.")
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My great-grandparents came from Germany in the late 19th century.
My grandmother told me that, at the time, immigrants were told that it was best not to speak their native language at home, to ensure that their children grew up speaking proper English. So, they spoke English at home with the kids, reserving German for when they wanted to talk about the kids.
She said that, growing up in her parents' house, there were some idioms that the family would use that nobody outside the family understood. She guessed that they were literal translations of German idioms.
The only one I remember her talking about was "That shakes the green stick!"
(Expression of exasperation and/or surprise, meaning, "Well, THAT figures!" or the equally-nonsensical "Well, THAT takes the cake!")
Amazingly enough, "lie/lay" never entered my radar.
I went to school in a school district where using "there/their/they're", "too/two/to", or "it's/its" incorrectly resulted in an automatic 0 on your paper, so those always stand out at me, both on resumes and in the general public.
I died a little inside every time I saw the poster for Anaconda: "It swallows it's victims whole". Really? No one in the entire marketing department noticed that, and you used it in a nationwide billboard/TV campaign? Ow. Ow. Ow. My brain!
And with the advent of texting it's only gotten worse. All of a sudden every "it's" has an apostrophe. Noooooooooo!!
The other huge one for me is actually apropos for the original post: British folk don't pronounce the initial 'h' for words like 'historic' and 'hysterical', so "an historic event" is correct in British English.
In the U.S. the 'h' gets pronounced, yet people who wish to appear highbrow still say, "An historic" while pronouncing the 'h'. Ouch! Ouch! Nooooooo!
And don't even get me started on the abominable pronunciations of "Uranus" and "harassment" that came about once the Beavis and Butt-Head generation reached voting age...
On the other hand, as anyone who reads my campaign journals knows, my knowledge of using punctuation with quotes and parentheses is sorely lacking, and I use commas excessively, so who am I to throw stones?
Some British folk don't pronounce the h - It depends on Class and region. If you travel 10 miles in any direction from where you are in Britain you will find the locals have a different accent/dialect.
Not every British person has escaped from a PG Woodhouse novel "pip pip old chap" or from East London "right you are gov, we best get this sorted before it goes all pear shaped".