Mine is tow the line rather than toe the line.
I imagine someone as a tugboat–towing the line of what is expected. I like that imagery better than keeping a foot on some fucking line. Plus using toe as a verb is dumb.
What are yours?
“It’s a doggy dog world.”
If only…
When im in a pinch, ill take a warm rag and soap to wash my armpits, and i call it a “horse bath”. Way better than calling it a “whore’s bath”
Jesus cries vs Jesus Christ
Like, when things are so bad even Jesus is mourning it.
oh oh oh i REALLY like this question. boy have i struggled with idioms over my life. theres so many idioms that trouble an confuse me that i cant even think of a favorite example.
heres a silly one - i always thought it was “bald faced lie” as in … like a blank, emotionless faced lie.
no, i guess its actually “bold faced lie” meaning kinda the opposite, that the lie is brazen and obvious.
Recently the lyrics just clicked for the Smiths song How Soon is Now. I thought he says “I am the sun and the air” as more of a metaphor, but he says “I am the son and the heir.”
Most people misconstrue the phrase “blood is thicker than water”. The WHOLE phrase is “blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb”. It literally means the opposite of what most people think it does.
No, it really means exactly what most people think it does:
The other day I heard someone say “fuck around and find out” to mean “experiment to discover the correct path” and was really amused by that concept.
That’s a brilliant take.
“Work cut out for you”
I always thought I meant that the job was made easier. Like in carpentry, if someone makes your cuts for you, half the job is done!
I mean it kind of does. The whole point is that it’s really easy to “see” the work because it’s such a giant mess
Mine is FTFY as fuck that fuck you.
I can’t help but read FTW as “Fuck the what” at first most times I see it. It just sounds so silly.
Because of a movie (I don’t remember the name, I don’t remember the plot), I thought it meant Fuck The World
Wasn’t “SFW” ( So fucking what), was it?
Also a number of punk songs titled FTW. The Dwarves come to mind.
So uh, what’s in supposed to mean according to the mainstream?
“Fixed that for you.”
What? My interpretation is “For the future you” lol
Ohhh
“it was at this moment, Bub realized why many of their online forum discussions may have ended with them being banned.”
I forgot about FTFY. I don’t know if I’ve seen it on lemmy
Yea that was mostly a reddit thing I think. Often petulant too.
SMH = so much hate
Though not an idiom, mine was thinking for years that “QFT” meant “quite fucking true”. Probably thought it for so long because it works (it means/meant “quoted for truth”–it was super common in WoW’s heyday, though I haven’t seen it in a while now).
For the longest time, in my online vocabulary, POC meant “piece of crap”. And then a few years back I started seeing posts and articles where this and that person was referred to as a POC, and it took me a while of thinking “that’s a bit harsh, though?”, until I realized that my three decades old IRC lingo had to be updated.
I can live without my original definition, as POS serves the same purpose. Plus, my earlier use had no connection to skin tone, but using it as “Piece of Crap” today gives some racist undertones that I don’t want to be associated with.
POS=Point Of Sale…
That guy is a real POS! (Piece Of Shit)
That is how I heard it before a job where they kept calling the computer a POS and I thought ‘it isn’t that bad, better than the register from the prior job’ for a couple weeks before someone called it a Point of Sale.
I am convinced most retail workers refer to the system by sharing my interpretation of POS…
Yeah, I can’t imagine how the people who named it POS would do it unironically!
It’s so funny whenever I hear that acronym used professionally.
“Oh yeah? you’re pretty psyched about your new enterprise grade POS system? Sounds awesome…”
Sure, it means point of sale, but it only means that in this one context…
Why does “piece of crap” have racist undertones?
It doesn’t. It’s also relatively uncommon–most people would say “piece of shit”.
In a vacuum it doesn’t, but the connotation of a more modern interpretation of the abbreviation would probably result in many interpreting any insistence from me as “Person of color” = “piece of crap”.
not sure if it qualifies but my father used to say assburn when pronouncing aspirin. I like his pronunciation better.
Not an idiom but still an amusing anecdote.
Not quite what you’re asking for, but when I first heard the phrase “balls to the wall”, I thought that it alluded to testicles. One of the Grand Theft Auto games has some radio audio that uses it satirically in this sense as well (“Lazlow, get your balls to the wall” or something similar).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall
First attested in the 1960s in the context of aviation, in reference to ball-shaped grips on an aircraft’s engine controls (typically throttle, prop pitch and fuel mixture). Pushing these “balls to the wall” would put the aircraft at maximum thrust.[1][2] Analogous to pedal to the metal. Not related to the term balls-out, which refers to a ball governor on a steam engine.[3] Neither balls-out nor balls to the wall is connected with the vulgar sense of balls (“testicles”) except via folk etymology.
EDIT: The GTA audio in question (the song itself used the phrase satirically, and the announcer does as well):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWwG6RJrLA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balls_to_the_Wall_(album)
Balls to the Wall is the fifth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released in 1983. It is Accept’s only record to attain Gold certification in the US.[1] The album’s title track became Accept’s signature song and remains a metal anthem and trademark in the genre.
Pushing these “balls to the wall” would put the aircraft at maximum thrust.
I see what you did there
unfortunately “thrust” is the accurate aircraft term 😭
fortunately
In Sweden we have this expression:
“Måla inte fan på väggen” - “Don’t paint the devil on the wall”
It simply menas to stop worrying and get on with it.
I have added stuff to it twice.
First time:
“Måla inte fan på väggen fören han står i farstun” - “Don’t paint the devil on the wall until he stands in the hallway”
This means, stop worrying, and get on with it, but if shit happens, be sure to document it.
Second time:
“Måla inte fan på väggen fören han står i farstun, men det skadar inte att ha färgen hemma” - “Don’t paint the devil on the wall until he stands in the hallway, but it doesn’t hurt to keep the paint ready”
This means, stop worrying, and get on with it, but be ready to document it if shit hit the fan.
Superstition: The phrase comes from an old European superstition (popular in Germany) that drawing an image of the devil would actually summon him or attract misfortune.
Do you work in manufacturing or something? Research?
Finance
more of a misheard lyrics, but the song “The Freshmen” by the Verve Pipe hits a bit different if you thought they were singing:
For the life of me, I cannot remember What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise For the life of me, I cannot believe We’d ever die for these sins, we were merely flesh then
I honestly like “milk toast” over milquetoast.
I always thought of it being so plain or bland having it made sense. Rather than a reference to a 1920s comic character.
Also, it doesn’t really fit but a coworker uses the phrase
“we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”
This is more of a fix of two phrases which is we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it and don’t burn your bridges.
I love mixing idioms, that one in particular is fun to use.
I’m also a fan of “throw caution to the wolves”.
does the pope shit in the woods?
Fun fact! The blending of idioms is called a malaphor! They’re a lot more common than you’d expect and I deliberately use them because I think they’re more fun.
“we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”
I use that so much I legitimately forget the whole “cross that bridge” when I’m in serious conversation.
You aren’t entirely wrong… The comic character was named after milk toast, because it’s so plain and bland.
“we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”
When used in a fitting situation, that’s one I’ve always really liked.
My previous boss used to say “We’ll blow that bridge when we get there”
