My Mother's Old-Fashioned Sayings

Carol W. Kimball

Old-fashioned sayings
Carol Kimball's mother

Kim11-038

Scrapbook

8: Communication Artifact

Documentary Artifact

The Day

New London, CT

06/18/2007

Carol W. Kimball

Were you brought up in a barn, my mother would ask. Barns and farms figured in many of Carol Kimball's mother's old fashioned sayings. You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if you tried, was another favorite. Too late to lock the barn after the horse is stolen, was another. Your chickens will come home to roost, meaning someone would get what they deserved. Or, a person might be running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Housecleaning might provoke mother to say, use plenty of elbow grease or, if time was short, just give it a lick and a promise. Sayings such as: You are slow as molasses. You chatter like a chipmunk. Your tongue is fastened in the middle and wags at both ends. Your eyes were bigger than your stomach. Born too long ago. Dead as a doornail. Six of one and half a dozen of another. Cat got your tongue. Since Methuselah was a pup. Knee-high to a grasshopper. Go fly a kite or go pound sand. A poor excuse is better than none. Tell that to Sweeney or tell that to the Marines. If the shoe fits, put it on. Happy as a clam. Happy as a clam at high tide. I'll put the kibosh on that.

Fish, William G. (Sr.)
Dickens, Charles
Fish, William G. (Sr.)

old-fashioned sayings
barns
chickens
country living