Sayings I Use Today That I Learned From My Grandfather

[stevesh]

Anytime anyone would ask, "Where is so-and-so?", he would reply with, "Went to shit and the hogs ate him".

And one that applied to tools, cars, farm machinery and the occasional woman: "She ain't much for pretty, but she's hell for stout".

[Usagi]

I didn't have the opportunity to know either of my Grandfathers, but my husband's uncle (a WWII vet who recently passed) used to say "Gotta hot date?" if anyone was rushing around in a hurry to leave.  I picked that one up second hand.

[HorrorRetro]

Whenever he encountered anything worthless, gramps would say, "It's like tits on a boar."

[bateman]

My Irish great grandfather used to say "The meat's tough, but it's tougher if there wasn't any."

[onan]

grandmother:

Cat fur to make kitten britches.

I don't use it... I do sometimes think of using it, but always think better of it.

[eddie dean]

my grandfather was always up before the sunrise and "raring to go"  to put anyone in the house to work. He would yell at everyone who was still in bed:
"get up,  god dam it, You're burning daylight!"

If one of the grandkids fell or otherwise hurt themselves it was always the same comment:
"Are you bleeding?"
No
"Then Hell,  you're Okay. You gotta be rough n' tough"

[UnscreenedCaller]

If there was any kind of pause in the conversation, my granddad would come out with his standard: "You think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?"

[Sardondi]

      From my grandmother.

       "Take that pen out of your mouth. A (take a guess ) may have touched it!

"Protestant"?
"Yankee fan"?
"Republican"?
"Englishman"?

Hmmm. Must be something else, but what?.....

My own grandfather, who lived on a house on a hill between his son and daughter (my mother) for 28 years (having moved there from 1/4 mile away) was full of colorful idiom.
"He's not much onions." (A man of poor character.)
"We're going to work all day today, even if it's just digging a hole and filling it back up."
"A little debt is a good thing to have, because it makes a man get up and go to work in the morning." (Oh, Grandaddy, such hopelessly naive thinking...)
"What in the Sam Hill do you mean...". (A euphemism for "hell" and such.)
"It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor one." (Technically true I suppose; but reality shows....)
"Be willing to sell everything but your wife and kids." (Don't let sentimentality get in the way of a good bargain.)
"There's no such thing as a job that pays too little to do: even if a job only pays a dollar, that's a dollar you didn't have." (Usually said to grandchildren to make sure they kept hustling, hustling to find work.)
"When the roll is called up yonder I'll be there." (Title of my grandfather's favorite hymn. When he was feeling especially good or things had gone particularly well at his feed and general store, he'd burst out singing it.) 

My grandmother's sayings:
"Enough food to feed Coxey's Army." ("Coxey's Army" were large bands of unemployed who marched on Washington a few years before the end of the 19th century to protest lack of jobs. They would have been very hungry as well, so the reference is to a large amount of food. This actually was a saying of my great-grandmother.)
"Hunger makes a good sauce." (The reply my grandmother almost invariably made when we complimented her on one of her spectacular country meals. The woman was of a time and place in which a person of high character simply would not silently accept a compliment, as to do so was a mark of sinful vanity.)
"I declare, it looks mighty dark and faloogious (phonetic) back over towards Texas. I do believe it is about to precipitate a small shower of rain." (Her playful mockery of a verbose neighbor, circa 1900)
"She took that turn like Lucky Teter." (Any reference to Lucky Teter meant a reckless, crazy, frightening driver. "Earl 'Lucky' Teter and his Hell Drivers" was a stunt driving act which was big at state and county fairs across the country in the 1930's, especially popular in rural areas. They would demonstrate precision driving at high speed, often involving sheets of flame and driving cars inches away from what seemed to be unavoidable wrecks, but somehow they all missed being killed at the last moment.) 
"Kissin' don't last, but cookin' do." (Familiarity tend to breed contempt, so you'd better be sure.)
"A lazy man's load." (Carrying too big a burden. Usually said when one of the grandchildren was carrying too much and thus being sloppy and careless, and even breaking things. Done in hopes of cutting down the total number of trips required to finish the job, and thus an attempt to shorten work time. But the old lady didn't miss a trick.)
"William Tecumseh Sherman is being pricked by the pitchforks of all the imps of perdition at this very moment for what he did to the defenseless women and children of Georgia and Carolina." (An article of faith learned at the knee of her mother and grandmother, who had personally experienced Sherman's version of war-fighting.

[Nucky Nolan]

My grandmother's sayings:
"William Tecumseh Sherman is being pricked by the pitchforks of all the imps of perdition at this very moment for what he did to the defenseless women and children of Georgia and Carolina." (An article of faith learned at the knee of her mother and grandmother, who had personally experienced Sherman's version of war-fighting.

That's surprising. I thought that you were 100% Scots-Irish Presbyterian Pennsylvanian. So, your grandma and grandpa were in a "mixed marriage" (Rebel and Yankee). I take it that they used different names for the same war.

[Eddie Coyle]

     

"Protestant"?
"Yankee fan"?
"Republican"?
"Englishman"?

Hmmm. Must be something else, but what?.....

        Prostestant...as alien to South Boston in that era as Zoroastrians or Sufis.

        Yankee fan...would have been akin to saying "Wop" considering their following in Noth End.  But getting warmer  .

       Republican...even rarer. But before there were "Reagan Democrats", there were "Nixon Democrats" and I'd say my grandmother was certainly unlikely to vote for McGovern.

        Englishman...technically speaking, my grandfather was "English", having been born in Ireland prior to 1922. I would probably get castor oil for even bringing it up.

       As for the mystery word. Think Dick Gregory's autobiography.

[The General]

My great grandfather wasn't the hardest working man in town.  He instead liked to loaf around and play his banjo.  (or so I am told, he died the year before I was born.)  One day, as his wife was cussing him out about one thing or another, he said, "There goes my wife, her beautiful ruby-red lips flapping in the breeze."

[Sardondi]

... As for the mystery word. Think Dick Gregory's autobiography.

Oh, wait! I remember - "Asshat"?

[Eddie Coyle]

Oh, wait! I remember - "Asshat"?

    Close. It was six letters.

[Juan]

My grandmother always said "Fabulous" instead of bullshit.  She also taught me that damnyankee is one word.

[basswood]

My grandmother always said "Fabulous" instead of bullshit.  She also taught me that damnyankee is one word.

My kind of grandmother, where was she from?

[stevesh]

"Enough food to feed Coxey's Army." ("Coxey's Army" were large bands of unemployed who marched on Washington a few years before the end of the 19th century to protest lack of jobs. They would have been very hungry as well, so the reference is to a large amount of food. This actually was a saying of my great-grandmother.)

My grandmother would say she 'made enough for threshers', a reference to the days when wheat harvesting was done by intinerant crews, ans few farmers could afford the machinery themselves.

[Eddie Coyle]

         My grandmother often said my many of my cousins were "as sharp as a bowling ball". I still use that today.

   

[Sardondi]

My grandmother always said "Fabulous" instead of bullshit.  She also taught me that damnyankee is one word.

Heh. That reminds me of the Charm School joke I first heard in the 60's, something about competitive girlfriends who didn't see each other for many years, and when they finally did, one continuously bragged to the other about increasingly unlikely social and intellectual triumphs of her family, to which the other said only "Faaaan-tastic!", to each success. When the braggart finally tired of blowing her own trumpet she asked her girlfriend what she had done with her life.
"Well, I went to Charm School."
"Really? What did you learn there?"
"How to say 'Faaaan-tastic!" instead of 'Bulllll-shit!' "

[eddie dean]

I use to work with a older guy who would always say,

" I gotta go see a man about a horse"

It was his way of telling us he was going to the bathroom to drop a deuce.
I don't know why he felt he had to announce this to everyone,
I guess it was the polite thing to do!

[PB the Deplorable]

He's got a head on him like a burnt match

[RealCool Daddio]

He's got a head on him like a burnt match

When my Grandfather (we call him Pa), would encounter a particularly dim individual, he'd remark "That fellow is as stunned as a bag of hammers."

I fondly remember sitting by him in his den, learning about opera as he watched it on PBS, on a tiny black and white TV with an old fashioned antenna.  He would have a cigar going, sitting in one of those big pedestal ash trays like you would see in pool halls - the kind with snooker tables.  The only first generation Italians he had ever met were on the battle fields of Europe, fighting for the wrong side, yet he was able to explain a Verdi opera as if he had been born there.

[Tinfoil Hat]

"It makes the folks as good as the people." (another way of saying "what's good for the goose is good for the gander")

I think this has Pennsylvania Dutch roots. It sounds like it's from a time when folk meant the farmers and people meant city dwellers.

[Rachael Nexusei]

My gramps-  'So the poor cow, he died.'  To end a conversation.
My stepgram's favourite- 'tables are for glasses and not for little asses' no matter what age or how big the bum.

[Mind Flayer Monk]

"There's a tool for that"
"When you are an anvil, bear. When you are a hammer, strike"