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In New Jersey you don't go "to the beach" or "to the ocean", you go "down the shore".

I'm about as handy as a button on a barn door.

You're as right as three rabbits. (You'll have to be pretty old to know where that one comes from!)

Slick as snot on a doorknob.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SewingSew (Post 7619049)

What vocabulary do you use that is specific to your region? I'd be very interested to hear from members in different countries. One of my girlfriends was from Manchester, England. She used to call a peanut butter sandwich a "peanut butter buddy." A burlap bag where I'm from is a "tow sack." Here is a very interesting link:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/the...OZM#.tbO54ZjZ2

This morning I was reading a thread on this board that had been started by one of our Australian members. She had posted some photos of projects that she had been working on and another member from St. Louis replied that she had been "busy as a beaver." She told her that this was an American expression. It made me think about a conversation I had with my husband just last night. We were watching a television show and I made a comment that one of the characters was "dumb as a hammer." DH asked me, "What does that even mean? I've never heard that before." Then I thought about it and realized that I don't even know what that means. I am originally from the south and it was common to hear that expression growing up. Turns out, the expression is more typically "dumb as a bag of hammers," or "dumb as a bag of rocks." Someone I know used to say, "If their brains were dynamite, they wouldn't have enough to blow their nose."

We've all heard things like, "He's not playing with a full deck," or "Their lights are on, but nobody's home," or "He's not the sharpest tool in the shed." How about, "Good lord willing, and the creek don't rise?" My ex-husband was from Colorado and he used to say that. In Maine, something is not just good, ; it is "wicked" good. In South Carolina, at the end of a visit, when company would leave and we would see them to the door, like clockwork, my relatives would always say, "Why don't ya'll stay awhile," but they didn't really mean it. If bad weather was on the horizon, we always said that it was "coming up a storm." If you agree with someone down south, you might say, "you ain't just whistling dixie." And yes, ain't is a word. If someone is full of themselves, we say that they are "too big for their britches." Have you ever been "too broke to even pay attention?" When I lived in Germany, I worked in a tailor shop ran by Germans. They taught me to say, "Men are all dumb (insert something not so nice here to replace the word dumb), one and all of them. What they don't have in their head they have in their little toe." They told me this was a typical German expression. They may have been pulling my leg... Which brings me to another expression--pulling my leg; where does that come from and what does it mean? Most of us have heard, "Bless your heart," or the passive-aggressive version, "bless your heart, tramp." Instead of saying, "I declare," in my family, we said, "I swanny." If we canned a lot of beans, we said that we "put up a mess of beans." What are some of your favorite expressions? Do you think they regional?

How about "he's about as sharp as the leading edge of a bowling ball"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pegasus (Post 7619102)

In Texas we have
"y'all" for you all...and we use it a lot!
"ice box" for refrigerator
"dolly" for handtruck
"feeder road" for the ground-level lanes that run parallel to the highway
"fixing to" meaning I am about to, e.g. "I'm fixing to run to the fabric store,"

I grew up in Texas and have been in Iowa for about 5 years. I used everyone of those expressions and still do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by quiltbuddy (Post 7619655)

Rubber bands are called gum bands in SW Pa. My grandma used to call underwear guchies.

Another few from SW PA, although I'm hearing less and less of them.

Y'inz or y'unz (similar to Y'all in TX)
Sammich (sandwich)
slippy (instead of slippery)
crick (instead of creek)
hoagie, which is a "grinder" in CT

My co-worker said that she left work so late yesterday she made just made it to her hair dresser's appointment 'by the skin of her teeth.' Which is not a foreign expression to me, but it just made me stop to ponder the oddness of it.

as useless as a rock in your shoe, here in Michigan we have the yuppers from the upper peninsula and the trolls those of us who live south of the Bridge. We are always going up North or down south.
seems everyone from the lower part of the state come up North all the time. My Ohio Grandkids call me Grandma Michigan and their other Grandma is Grandma waterpark.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pokeygirrl (Post 7619811)

My aunt lived in tallulah for most of her life. Boy did you just give me some memories with the "sha"

I'm glad I gave you a flashback. After I posted I remember another thing that is so common, even to those who do not speak French. It is the use of the word "mais" (pronounced may)... as in "mais ya" (most drop the s in yes and say the a as in apple). Most of the time it is said for "well" -- mais, ya; mais, no. mais sha.

If you were in Tallulah, you heard these expressioins.

One of my favorites has always been "he/she/it is so ugly, he/she/it would make a freight train take a dirt road." Another is "a carpenters dream, flat as a pancake, and never been nailed." (Refers to a very young, innocent woman)
When some one was lying, down south, I always heard "that dog don't hunt". For someone who worries about everything that might happen..."when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras".