dlaire wrote:

*(literally) to think about blue almonds ->(meaning) to daydream

What a nice one! In Catalan, you may say "to have one's head in the clouds" as a synonym for daydreaming. (Edit: so it's the same sentence than in English. Thanks Stormy!)
I will try to think about more of those funny idioms; right know I only recall of "one's Saint went to Heaven", which precisely means that one forgot about something that they previously knew...

Something vaguely related: how do you say that something is / sounds fake, in English or in other languages? I'm used to hearing that "something is faker than a 3 euros coin" or "faker than a coin made in Sevilla." Any apportations?

Last edited by Asfalolh (10-01-2008 02:55:38 PM)

Butterflies can be stress or infatuation. It refers to that fluttery feeling you get in such situations, as if butterflies were flying around in your stomach...or in your behind if you're Jimmy Kimmel.

Here in America, the $3 dollar bill, which doesn't exist, is also used sort of like a 3 Euro piece, but not quite...if a guy is really gay, he might be described as "queer as a $3 bill".

And now for my all-time favorite idiom, if a woman has a nice body, she can be described (and yes, I've heard it used in conversation) as being "built like a brick shithouse" Can you believe that? I couldn't make shit like that up! I was seriously sitting next to some old dude on a plane once when he started reminiscing about an old flame who he fondly described that way! And yes, I'm sure it was meant to be complimentary!

"Un mirlo blanco," literally "a white blackbird," is a Spanish idiom meaning something like "one in a million."  Sometimes I use it as my AIM tagline. 

Stormcrow wrote:

And now for my all-time favorite idiom, if a woman has a nice body, she can be described (and yes, I've heard it used in conversation) as being "built like a brick shithouse" Can you believe that? I couldn't make shit like that up! I was seriously sitting next to some old dude on a plane once when he started reminiscing about an old flame who he fondly described that way! And yes, I'm sure it was meant to be complimentary!

I thought that was just an Australasian thing! Although, then again, we tend to use it to mean something that's solidly built, and not necessarily attractive...

I loved annoying people in the UK with New Zealand slang. Like Aussies, we tend to say "She'll be right, mate." There is no she. It just means: "Whatever, don't worry about it." "Sweet" and "Sweet as!" are general exclamations of "Cool!" and yet the Yorkshire folk never seemed to pick up on it. They also used to be mystified when we talked about things out in the wop-wops (i.e. in the countryside).

satyreyes wrote:

"Un mirlo blanco," literally "a white blackbird," is a Spanish idiom meaning something like "one in a million."  Sometimes I use it as my AIM tagline. 

We have 'a white raven', not blackbird. It is used sometimes in order to describe a book that is very difficult to find.
Something precious and rare is called 'little pearl' (it's one word in Polish) quite often.
Now I remember quite popular Polish idiom 'crocodile's tears' which means 'insincerely cry'.
Clarice, give us more of New Zealand's slang!

It's good you cannot help yourself, I want more! I was serious when I said I'm linguistic freak.
When someone is boasting about oneself we say 'egg wiser than hen'. Polish curses... 'go to hell/Devil' is the only one which cames to my mind now. Expressions about being angry are quite funny IMO.
We use many words to describe attractive girl - 'laska' (staff? walking-stick?) is the most popular. Yes, it's stupid. What's funny, I know teenagers that call slutty girl FANTA - fuck and never touch again.

Booger is also a derogatory term for Whites in Cherokee.  Yes, it's convoluted with the little mucus nuggets.  And the bogeyman/boogerman.

Idioms from places I've lived in the States, but never understood properly (I mean, I get the meaning, but not how they came about): joshing (to mean, joking), and "Lord love a duck!"

One of my favourite New Zealand "Yes, that actually IS an idiom, don't take it literally!" is the invitation to dinner that states: "Bring a plate." While we do mean that you should bring a literal plate, we're actually meaning a platter with food to share. Like a pot-luck dinner. Yet every year some foreigner gets caught out bringing an empty dinner plate to a barbeque. You'd think we'd learn. But we never, ever do.

There's also something I used to say in Yorkshire to annoy my workmates: "Not even ow!" It...it's actually more Māori than anything else, and because I'm about as whitebread Pākehā as they come, I really can't do it right. If you want an idea of the stereotypical Māori accent -- and how you say that "ow" -- this demonstrates it pretty well. Like most exclamations around here, it means nothing. Except maybe "Get off of it!" Heh.

I'm not sure if it's just a New Zealand thing to say that someone is as pissed as an owl to mean "drunk," though. Do you Aussies do that too? We also use the term "queer" to mean "weird" or "strange" a lot more than other English speaking countries that I've noticed, though it's lessened since I was a kid, for obvious reasons.

My personal favorite, and most frequently used, would be "It's no skin off my nose", which means "It makes no difference to me". (Although I always say "It's no skin off my teeth", but no one else ever seems to say that. I suppose most people wouldn't have skin on their teeth. [/zombie])

dollface wrote:

My personal favorite, and most frequently used, would be "It's no skin off my nose", which means "It makes no difference to me". (Although I always say "It's no skin off my teeth", but no one else ever seems to say that. I suppose most people wouldn't have skin on their teeth. [/zombie])

There's also the saying "by the skin of [my] teeth" which means something that occurred by the barest of chances. "Miki retained his virginity in Akio's car by the skin of his teeth."

...I just remembered my favourite idiom for "useless." Which is "that's about as useful as two tits on a bull."

I'm from "the south" and we have a million weird sayings...  Not idiomatic in the same vein as dlaire's orginals, because mostly they are straightforward like "about as useful as tits on a bull" is when you think about them for a moment.

For some reason I can't think of many of them right now, but my aunt has one that I've always loved:

     "He couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the sole."  (He's stupid)

Only other thing coming to mind is the ever popular (and I believe probably common in other english speaking countries) "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

My brain's not really working right now, so I can't think of anything else like "head in the clouds." :-/