E. Tenn sayings
 

Don't you love the picturesque way regional expressions bring images to mind?
I love "Grinning like a mule eating briars!", and "she could go bear hunting with a switch".

My mother used to laugh and say that after my dad went to NC State, he "carried" her on dates, etc.

I recognize a lot of these. Some of the expressions have been re-tooled to fit a particular dialect. Just Jan, I have heard, " to hell in a handbasket." Where I'm from we wear pantyhose. In other places they are called nylons. We wore house-shoes. To others, they are referred to as slippers. I wore a house-coat. Someone else might call it a robe. Nobody has mentioned names for body parts, for the sake of not being too crude, I'll simply say that we referred to our southern region as our private... for one. I've heard a lot of other interesting names for it though.

How about, "He don't know sh_t from Shinolah?" Or, "He's about as crooked as a three-dollar bill?" Or "He was fast as greased lightning."

My girlfriend had been raised in the north, and we took a road trip down south to visit my family. We passed a road sign that said, "speed limit 55, the law." She got the biggest kick out of that. Down south we call policemen, "the law."

Oh, and also, where I'm from, for punishment, you get switched. My step-mother, who was "old-school" used to call it hickory- tea. She would make me go out and get my own switch ( a branch off a tree). It had to be green so that it would "cut the blood," which is pretty self-explanatory.

Wonderfully entertaining thread. I have heard the majority of these of these and some are familiar from my experience and some I've heard from others. Bu some of these were new to me.
I grew up in the Midwest and have lived in several midwest states and every where I had lived soda pop was always "pop". My dd went to a college here but had friends from NY and when she came home for a break she said she was laughed at by her NY friends when she called it pop-they said its called it soda. I told her everywhere I have lived it was pop so they just didn't realize other areas have their own colloquial words and phrases.
At work one day in explaining a situation to a coworker I told her "I didn't want to cut my nose off to spite my face". She was from Korea and after college here became a citizen and has been here ever since(more than 40 years). She asked me what I meant by that. So I tried to explain it to her-I'm not sure if she really got the meaning or not.
Once talking with dh and giving a direction for a place that was across the intersection diagonally from a reference place, saying it was katty whompus from this place he looked at me and said what? He grew up in Chicago and had never heard that one.

Yard apes-kids playing outside. Tax deductions -kids. Rents- parents who pay the bills (usually said by teenagers).

Mom made Slum-gullion... any soup made from leftovers.
he/she doesn't know s**t from Shinola. (Shinola was a bran of shoe/boot polish)
Outen the light... turn off the light
Go to town... go grocery shopping...
Going to town... meant to do something in a hurry. He's sure going to town on that (project)
Don't have a pot to p*** in, or a window to throw it out! (very poor)
Uglier than homemade sin.
Botten... meaning purchased from a store (store bough) as opposed to homemade.
Piddlin around... wasting time or putsying... floating from one thing to the next.

Pussy-footin' around meant you were messing around and not getting the job done fast enough.
Lying through your teeth meant that you were seriously lying.
A hop, skip, and a jump was a measure of a short distance.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire meant going from bad to worse.
He was stuck to her like white on rice, meant he couldn't get enough of being close to her. He was stuck up her butt means the same thing.
You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
There are more ways than one to skin a cat.
Some of these seem so second nature that it would seem everybody has heard them before, but I know that is not true.

How about these:

Two shakes of a lamb's tale.
She's built like a brick s**thouse. (I guess that means she's a biggggg girl)
If you lay with dogs you will get fleas.
Bats**t crazy.

We used to say "She's built like a brick S**t house, with every brick in place!" meaning well built or a very curvy girl.
Begging for trouble, looking for trouble, up to no good.
You can't fit a square peg in a round hole!
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Mom always said this! Thanks for the memories.