Chewing the fat

Tis sad to say, O, but all these are from days gone by, things my parents would have said.

I wouldn't try to tell what the latest are, they will be changed again by this afternoon.

By the way, Van Gogh cut off his ear, so someone with a Van Gogh's ear for music has no ear at all.


Joe

"Chew the fat" is Cockney rhyming slang (Chew the fat = Have a chat). It is still understood, but a bit dated.

"Double dutch": Understood and still used. So is "It's all Greek to me."

"Bell the cat": Will be current as long as Aesop and Aesop is older than Christianity. Incidently, the meaning is not "who will risk one's life", but "there's a difficult problem here--which everyone wants to be solved-- and who is going to handle it?"

Joe told you all about Van Gogh's missing ear.

Barbecue as pirate? I have vague memories of this usage from my fling with historical novels 40 years ago, but this is not current English usage.

"Someone's name is mud". Dr. Mudd was the man who treated John Wilkes Booth who was shot in the leg after he killed President Lincoln. Dr. Mudd's reputation and his medical practice were both destroyed.
The phrase puns on "Mud-which-is-wet-dirt" and Dr. Mudd.

Roman Holiday is not so much appreciating other people's misery as viewing other people's troubles as an entertaining way to spend the afternoon. The classic phrase is "Butchered to make a Roman Holiday."

Let the idioms go their way -- a road to museum, and blessing them, except those picked out by Noddy.

I'm 16, and I have never heard of those in my life...

That's it. Do you mind telling where you live?

The U.S. Let me think of some that are still in use...

Here's some that come to mind:

Dough = money

Gung Ho = sure/obsessive? (My sister and her friends use this. They say, "Don't be so gung ho about it.")

Jinx = curse/bad luck (This word was a total hit back in elementary when we used to say "Personal jinx!" when you say the same word at the same time as someone else.)

Phat = cool? (I'm not sure...I'm not that ghetto. )

Flash/Flashing = Mooning = showing your bare butt

There's more but my brain doesn't seem to be working. I don't use idioms very often...or I just can't identify them as idioms. Haha.

S: Tell Oristar what you mean by It's a perfect example of a modern idiom.

The meaning of ghetto tends to change based on the context of the sentence or situation. In my case, I mean as in hip hop since phat is commonly used by those who are into hip hop. However, in a sentence where one is referring to a really cheap-looking object, it will go like this: "That's one ghetto car!" But then again, it can also mean really cool and of good quality: "Oh my gosh! That's one ghetto watch..."<--in tone of wonder, shock, and amazement Ghetto can also be used to describe people. But I think ghetto is mostly used to describe things that are really cheap and ugly.

I'd say "tight" is a good idiom to describe something cool and good rather than "ghetto." But I really hate to use that word...as well as ghetto.

wow.

let me check the mirror.

yep.

I'm old.

Well explained Sententia.

Using the word ghetto might smell the odour of a racist?
That is why you didn't want to use ghetto?

It's not that it's racist to use ghetto. I'm just not that type of person. I just can't imagine myself saying to someone, "That's really ghetto." That word is generally used by someone who's relaxed most of the time or which was the case a year or two ago, someone who wants to fit in and follow what the crowd does... I tend to replace ghetto with words that accurately attribute the object or person. The word gay was used commonly to mean anything negative when I was in elementary school, but it's used less frequently now. I used to use it, too, but that was before I knew the real meaning of gay. (I mean as in homosexual...not happy.) I think with America accepting gays moreso than a couple of years ago, people tried to stop using gay negatively. I do hear it sometimes, but then, especially at school, people are reprimanded by fellow classmates or friends for saying that in a negative way. (But, unfortunately, people still use faggot...)

Sententia, oristra--

Consider the possibility that sixteen year olds do not yet have a complete linguistic grasp of the English language--or of any language.

Age doesn't necessarily confer wisdom, but age and ominivorous reading accumulate vocabulary words the way a well-built pier collects barnacles.

Re: Chewing the fat


This means drinking beer and eating pork rinds.

Noddy, I got confused by your idiom " a well-built pier collects barnacles." What does it mean?

Barnacles are a useless but extremely adhesive form of shellfish. Seagoing ships have to have the barnacles scraped off the hull every so often because they slow the ship down.

No one bothers to scrape barnacles off a pier (wharf/dock). Barnacles just accumulate and accumulate and accumulate.

Cheers, I got this one that was so familiar in my childhood.

Barnacles:

Incidently, Oristar, "a well-built pier collects barnacles" isn't an idiom (a basic peculiar structure in the language). It's just a fact with bit of flair.