The beginnings of this Southern saying are lost to time-just suffice it to say that it means that the speaker is ravenously hungry. I could eat the north end of a south-bound polecat. "Farmers thus dunk hens in cold water to 'break' their broodiness… and hens don't like that one bit." 17. "Hens sometimes enter a phase of 'broodines,' meaning that they'll do anything to incubate their eggs and will get agitated when farmers try to collect them," Insider explains of this saying's origin. Knee-high to a grasshopper.Īccording to Book Browse, the phrase "knee-high to a grasshopper"-which refers to smallness associated with a young age-first appeared in The Democratic Review in 1851. Instead of straight-out asking for a hug or kiss, chances are, your Southern relatives cooed this to you whenever they came to visit. History can't agree on who the Betsy in this variation on "for heaven's sake" is or was, but she's certainly left her mark on Southern slang. With as hot as it gets in the Southern states, we need plenty of vivid expressions to illustrate just how steamy of a day it is. More than Carter's got little pills.Īccording to the language podcast A Way With Words, variations on the saying, "more excuses than Carter's got pills" arose from a "very successful product known as Carter's Little Liver Pills," which "were heavily marketed beginning in the late 1880s, and as late as 1961 made for some amusing television commercials." ![]() (Some of us several times a day.) This phrase means that the object of your hunt was so close, it could've literally struck. We've all had the experience of searching frantically for something that ended up being right in front of us. If it had been a snake, it would have bitten me. So a person who's had a rough day and is a little worse for wear may compare themselves to a horse with a lazy owner. Anyone who knows horses knows that they have to be cooled down and groomed after a ride before they're stabled for the night. This one may sound a little blue, but it has a practical source. ![]() That's because, in Southern parlance, the hair of a frog must be too fine to even detect-hence this colorful compliment. ![]() Finer than a frog's hair.Įver complimented a frog on their coif? Probably not.
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