English language
philippasmith2
Posts: 9,648
This intrigues me and I am wondering whether it is actually true - according to the experts we do.
I'm not only thinking of the use in everyday language but also why or how some of it came into being.
eg Happy as Larry ( larry lamb - lambs gambolling in a field and looking happy to our eyes ? but why Larry unless it came from the children's Larry the Lamb so relatively recent in terms of language per se.
Nothing serious ( or even garden related ) but dinner is on and it's getting too dark to garden
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happy as a pig in pooh .....springs to mind .....all my Russian family and friends now use this .....
Cock-a-hoop
Pleased as a dog with two tails
Nope. It's from a story in an NZ paper about an Oz boxer called Larry who won a significant sum and was described as being very happy.
I watched a series on Invasions of the British Isles - more and more recently than you'd think - and, apparently, after the Norman invasion language morphed to adopt French/Latin origin words for "refined" stuff and Anglo/Saxon/Norse for mundane stuff like pigs, cows, their manure production and anything else mucky.
The French have a saying for getting back to the subject in hand "Revenons à nos moutons" which went into common usage after a well known court case about a problem with sheep. When the lawyers digressed, at length, the judge intervened saying "let's get back to our sheep".
At the cow's tail........being last.
Buying a pig in a poke.
You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
My contribution has got to be ..... busy as a bee!
Bee x
Horses for courses
It's a dog's life - round here anyway.
As blind as a bat.
As bald as a badger.