Talk Like a Texan

Since I spent my adolescence in the rich linguistic landscape of Texas, I couldn’t help loving and laughing along with Maud Newton‘s “Favorite Expressions of My Deceased (and Beloved) Texan Grandmother, with Explanations.” I particularly enjoyed #2:

She’s really shittin’ and flyin’ now.

(Translation: “She’s nouveau riche and has just bought something that proves it.” To the best of my understanding, shitting while flying, as a pigeon would, is glamorous to anyone who would wear a mink coat and drive a Corvette to go grocery shopping.)

Here are a few of my own favorites that she didn’t mention:

It’s rainin’ like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.

(Translation: “It’s raining heavily.” Hey, it’s an image, right?)

Looks like a real frog-strangler.

(Translation: ditto.)

I’m tireder than a one-legged man in an ass-kickin’ contest.

(Translation: “I’m very tired.” I think I’ve also heard a “one-armed paper-hanger” version of this one, but I think this version is a bit more uniquely Texan.)

I’m hotter than a rat’s ass in a cornfield.

(Translation: “The temperature outside is uncomfortably high.” To be honest, I never really understood this one, though that hasn’t stopped me from using it.)

I want you on him like a duck on a june bug.

(Translation: “Get as close to him as you can.” Another variation on the “fly on shit” or “white on rice” expression, this was one of my soccer coach’s favorite ways of describing man-on-man defense.)

Any Texans out there, please feel free to add to this list. For that matter, I’d love to be exposed to idioms from other regions as well.

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