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[Dyan]

When I was small and my dad went out I'd ask him where he was going and he'd always reply " I'm going to see a man about a dog"
He never came home with one though

If your slip/petticoat was showing my grandmother use to say,"Charlie's dead" And also this little rhyme " If you want to live and thrive let a spider run alive" whenever there was a spider.

[CLKD]

Yep we had all those in our family too ……..

[Taz2]

Hattie - here is the whole Pelican saying

A wonderful bird is the pelican.
His bill can hold more than his belican.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week,
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

Taz x

[Hurdity]

Oh I must be old too - we said Charlie's dead at school - the days when girls wore petticoats (actually I don't think I did but other girls did!).

"I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" - this is a weird one and was used in my young days to mean if you were going to do something - then do a bigger thing while you're at it - eg take a bigger risk or whatever, rather than punishment.

"Go the whole hog"
"Three sheets to the wind"

I still use expressions that my sons laugh at and say that's not an expression - but I can't remember them now!

Hurdity x

Afterthought - this is one they laughed at:
"It's the bees knees" - where on earth does that come from?

[Hattie]

Thanks Taz   

My dad only ever used to quote the first line - i always took it to mean he was saying that i'd bitten off more than i could chew !! by the way he said it.

Hattie X

[Taz2]

I reckon that's what he meant Hattie!

Hurdity - does this help http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bee1.htm  and the sheep one goes back to the 1600s

" The origin lies in the brutal history of English law. At one time, a great many crimes automatically attracted the death penalty: you could be hanged, for example, for stealing goods worth more than a shilling. Sheep stealing was among these capital crimes. So if you were going to steal a sheep, you might as well take a full-grown one rather than a lamb, because the penalty was going to be the same either way.
Since the law was reformed in the 1820s to end the death penalty for the crime, the proverb must be older; in fact the earliest example known is from John Ray's English Proverbs of 1678: “As good be hang'd for an old sheep as a young lamb”."

Taz x

[CLKD]

That's a saying in our family too

[Hurdity]

Haha Thanks Taz!
Also interesting about the sheep - how far back it originated.

Hurdity x

[Witches Cat]

On the weather front, my old granny (born 1901) was a seamstress and she always used to tell my sister and I that there's going to be good weather coming if we could see enough blue sky to make "a pair of cats trousers"  perhaps the cat accompanied the sailor on the boat..   

[catdude]

My mum's version was 'enough blue sky to make an elephant a pair of trousers'. Why anyone would want to do that is another matter....

[CLKD]

….. sailor's trousers ………..

[Hattie]

 grasp the nettle

 Exaggerate to Educate

[CLKD]

BUMP

[CLKD]

'trying to knit fog' - thanks GypsyRose!

[Annie0710]

When we used to ask our mum what was for dinner she'd say "air pie and windy pudding"
Meaning we'd get nothing ! (She always did feed us though :-)) xx