Family Phrases

[DaisyNonna]

Are there any phrases or sayings which seem only to be used by your family?
My Granny said, "There's corn in Egypt yet." Anyone heard it used?

[boxtops]

That's a Biblical quote, I think, Daisy. We had a whole language when I was younger - mostly baby words which had been adopted into the whole family

[murraymints]

if you picked your nose....it'll be a pig's foot in the morning ??? granny....

[AlwaysConfused]

Whenever we answered or started a question with 'well' and dared to pause for a millisecond, my granddad used to ask 'where's the well without the water?'. I was always convinced he was talking about a whale, though!

[DaisyNonna]

Probably would have been Biblical, Great grandfather was a lay preacher but I have not heard others use it.

[twofeathers]

Horsefeathers Applesauce and fiddlesticks were used quite a lot (Nonsense) and there was a lot of that in our family

[EcclesCake]

I can't remember the last time I heard someone use fiddlesticks!

[Georgiesmum]

I regularly say oh fiddlesticks if something goes wrong
I f something went wrong my mum often said "Oh its enough to make a monkey bite his mum!"

[carrot99]

In the 70s I worked with an elderly Welsh woman who would say "there's corn in Egypt" every pay day.

[DaisyNonna]

Excellent carrot! My Granny was Welsh. Spent 4 years in Cardiff but never heard it there.

[gness]

We have a saying in our quirky Irish family which my daughter hates for some reason.

If one of us does something that reminds others of one of our older relatives we say...Well you didn't get that from kissing a stone.....☺

[Peter Pedant]

Mark my words....... cue for olds to start their usual moralising
there a moral in it somewhere .....cue for olds to start their usual moralising
as your grandmother used to say: ..... cue for olds to start their usual moralising
well there you are you see...... cue for olds to start their usual moralising
that's difference between young and old .. .. . cue for olds to start their usual moralising

I clearly spent some time in my mis-spent yoof being moralised at

[Georgiesmum]

In the 1950's my old school teacher used to say "goodness gracious galloping grasshoppers " when anything surprised him.
Another phrase of his was "Cor! chase me round the cherry tree!"
If something was damaged and didnt look too good, my nan used to say "Oh thats alright, a blind man would be pleased to see that!"

[mazie]

My Mum's favourite when anyone asked how she was...was "I'm in a Mucking Fuddle"

[tonyav]

My mom would say to us ( brother and I ) if one of us was swolling for one reason or another 'If The Wind Changes Your Face Will Stick Like That'.

[twofeathers]

Grandfather used to say Box and Cox (i did some research) I knew it means to chop and change but not its origin


In a farce by JM Morton (1811-1891) called Box and Cox, a deceitful lodging house lady called Mrs. Bouncer let a single room to a Mr Box; without telling him she also let the same room to a Mr Cox. Since one worked at night and the other during the day they never met but there was a great deal of scheming needed by Mrs. Bouncer in order to achieve this.

[Mojo-Jo-Jo]

If I was bored my nan would say "do something then". When I asked what, she would say, "I dunno, stand on your head and bark at the moon".

[Graham-W]

Tha's about as much use as a brocken winded cart-hoss.
A saying of my grandad who was a horseman, in the early 1900s, until the advent of tractors.

It's lookin' a bit black ovver Bill's mother's.
( it looks like rain . Never did find out who Bill was.

[Peter Pedant]

yeah tony - gurning at each other -
if you look like that when the clock strikes and it'sll stick...

[Blackiequine]

Similar to Gness "he didn't lick that off the pavement" as in the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Like Mazie's mum's one!

[Psybbo]

'You didn't get that from our side of the family'