Expressions which not make sense deaf people

DeafCaroline said:
nits and grits - finely ground corn.

grits is a basic dish so I'm guessing the nitty gritty means to get down to the basics.
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Very cool, I did not know this. Thanks for it.

beo - fair enough. It's weird that I know when to use the term but don't know how it was formed.
Acually I am not even sure how I learned it in the first place, might have been from TV..
 
Sunshine said:
Do most these mysterious expressions rhyme?
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Some of them do, so I guess that help explains their popularity.

nitty gritty

rocks (my) socks

bees knees -- AFAIK, that's an old expression. I don't think anyone uses it anymore.
 
Sunshine said:
Same bees knees...wtf? Bees have knees?
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:lol: No, I don't think bees do, but I've heard this one before.

"Bees' knees" = something is awesome

"That V8 motor is the bees' knees."

My father's generation seems to like saying this a lot. It might have been slang. Bee and Knee sound almost the same, and I think some of these sayings are used because of how they sound. It's idiomatic slang.

Nice example of an inexplicable idiom. :D
 
naisho said:
Here is one for you guys:
nitty gritty. Try explaining that one to a deaf person about how it was formed.
I have no idea :dunno2: but I just know what it means.
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I don't think many hearing people know how it was formed. :lol:
 
Yes, Sunny. Rocks my socks rhymes, so it flows off the tongue better than rocks my world.
 
Now someone explain 'the cat's meow'. I heard someone say that the other day but wasn't really sure what it meant.
 
Dixie said:
Now someone explain 'the cat's meow'. I heard someone say that the other day but wasn't really sure what it meant.
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Cat's meow, means it is really cool, or awesome... usually something that is the best. Or... something sexy. Like a woman dressed up really nice and just smoldering. She's the "cat's meow."

Or an Apple MacBookPro, might be thought of as the "cat's meow" of the laptop world.

That's how I understand it, anyway.
 
I used to have a book of Idioms... I will have to search for it.
 
^^^I used to have a book on organizing... I think it's around here somewhere.
 
all of this is proof that english is actually a boring language and we have to decorate it so other people can appreciate it.
 
posts from hell said:
all of this is proof that english is actually a boring language and we have to decorate it so other people can appreciate it.
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Our language is difficult to learn because of the various words with multiple meanings or words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings, then we have words that are spelled the same but are pronounced differently with different meanings.

The word with most difficulty I have seen? Read and read. Both present and past tenses. The hispanics want to roll the r, and when they use it in a sentence it's not matched properly such as:

Did you read (past tense) the book?

OR

Have you read (present tense) the book?

I understand what they mean, it's just their usage of it jars my mind a bit.

I remember once I used the idiom "Are you pulling my leg?" to a hispanic. He gave me a crazed look like "I am not pulling on your leg! I have not touched your leg!" I explained it to him and he was funny in his response. He was shaking his head 'yes' that he now understood the idiom, but was saying 'no' that he was not lying to me. I couldn't help but giggle.
 
I had to learn idioms with my TOD when I was in school. So I know a lot of them too.

"Raining like cats and dogs" is probably the foremost one that I remember.
 
I love love English idioms. I taught them to my 4th graders two years ago...they loved them as well.
 
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