Folktales

Recently, I started wondering whence those picturesque expressions we’ve all heard originated.

Well, of course, something like madder than a wet hen has to have country roots. We city dwellers wouldn’t know a wet hen from a dry one. We also wouldn’t have any idea how angry being wet would make her.

These little bits of the vernacular can make your speech more colorful and colorful language makes conversation more entertaining.

I have favorite colloquialisms, of course, but I’ll be gobsmacked if I understand where they came from.

Some are just cute as a button. Others are cumbersome. As? What? I don’t know a slangy comparison for that one.

Unwieldy as a tractor on a mountain top? Is a tractor that uncomfortable with heights?

Familiarity with animal husbandry or just animal psychology does enter into some of these choices. You’re as hungry as a bear. Then there’s “as cunning as a fox.” How about ‘as persnickety as a porcupine’?

The argument or assumption that this flavorful language has a Southern connection may stem from too many episodes of Designing Women. Idioms come from all over.

Sometimes, the really clever raconteur adds another component, doubling up on the metaphoric. The analogy can become more specific if s/he says, “as cunning as a fox with a PhD.”

Why can’t word-play be more urban than rural? “She’s as twisty as Columbus Circle” may not be sheer poetry, but it’s my start. “He’s tracking farther than the A train?”

“He wears so many hats that he’s Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday.”

I have to admit I am on the fence about most of the little similes I just built.

I wish I could say my linguistic alterations made me feel as cozy as two peas in a pod