Folk sayings, whether simile, methaphor, or proverbial,
can be worth collecting and examining as a possible insight into the concerns
and beliefs of the folk group creating and using them. Later in the course
we will discuss an American army general who believed that collecting enemy
probverbs and folk songs was a most useful way to understand the enemy.
Folk saying can also, like the following, be most interesting! If you know
of any colorful sayings from your neck of the woods, please post them on
our bulletin board.
From Anne Digus' More Colorful Texas Sayings Than You Can Shake a
Stick at
So dry the trees are bribing the dogs.
He's so country he thinks a seven-course meal is possum and a six-pack.
If she crows, the sun is up.
Don't squat on your spurs.
She has short arms and deep pockets.
He's riding a gravy train with biscuits wheels.
Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash.
Cold as an ex-wife's heart.
He looks like the cheese fell off his cracker.
He can blow out the lamp and jump into bed before it gets dark.
We've howdied but we haven't shook.
Don't dig up more snakes than you can kill.
Even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while.
He wasn't born, just squeezed out of bartender's rag.
As welcome as an outhouse breeze.
If brains were leather, he couldn't saddle a flea.
He couldn't pour piss out of a boot with a hole in the toe and the directions
on the heel.
They planted their crop before they built their fence.
Noisy as two skeletons dancing on a tin roof.
I'd rather watch her walk than eat fried chicken.
So ugly that his mama had to tie a pork chop around his neck so the dogs
would play with him.
He's like a blister--he doesn't show up till the work's all done.
