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Collecting Slang and Idioms

novella

novella

Active Member
Does anyone have any slang words or coinages particular to your corner of the world? I love to use authentic colloquial words in my writing, especially in dialogue.

Is the word or phrase a regional thing, a neighborhood thing, or a family-wide thing?

Most of the online slang dictionaries are out of date or deeply unsatisfying. Let's get a cool list together. Rhyming slang welcome (but please provide all parts)!
 
well my husband often says things like, useless as a bull with tits, or hotter than a whore eating onions. queerer than three dinks on a dog.
we have a boarder who lives with us from newfoundland, and so now we all say"best kind" ie: we went out for dinner.
oh was it good
oh best kind!
sort of like saying everything was great
i use the phrase, makes my bum water, for any situation that is cringe worthy, like severing a tendon, or getting a tax bill.
 
Slang? Hmm...

Lamer
Wanna
Waz up
Yank
Yummy
Wut
Thug
Straight-up
Prob
Popper
Old Fart
Bah
Meh
Biz
Dork
Dweeb
Wanksta
Whacked
Woot
Bimbo
Booty
Doozy
Frig
Goof ball
Slammin
Snarf
Twit
Crackin
Whiz-bang
 
(on sweating through heat) Sweating like a priest in a playground.
(on homosexuals) As bent as a bottle of crisps
(on homosexuals) As camp as a row of tents
 
jenn, those are cool. Are they particular to NS? I like the whore/onion one a lot.

RG, I think those are pretty ubiquitous. I live 3000 miles away frm you and know them all.
 
Help m'boab! (Comparison: Jesus Christ! or Oh no!)
Crivvens! (Comparisons: Damn!)
"Pure dead brilliant" - It was good.
 
Right now, everything my son approves of is "SWEEEET." Or "kickin'"


Also,

mint = cool

pukka = great

nuke-U-LAR = monumentally stupid

pawbulous = fabulous as a cool dog
 
This is something that's very familiar to Chinese Malaysians or Singaporeans. There's a suffix we use for almost anything: "lah"/"lar".

"So hot lah" - very hot
"Give it to me lah!" - conveys irritation
"Come with us lah!"
"Can do this one lah" - extremely colloquial this one - insisting that something can be done.

Lots of other examples lah. Tired lah, listing all out. :)

In fact, there's such a thing as Manglish (or Malaysian English) and Singlish (Singaporean English), which is a corruption of english usage among Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans. I'll dig through my archives and see if there's something I can find on this - there are chain mails on this that are bloody hilarious.

Goto Wikipedia and lookup Singlish and Manglish for more info (or hilarity, depending).

ds
 
We have lots of regional sayings and dialect in Yorkshire, but I always have trouble thinking of them because to me they are just normal, if you know what I mean.

As rare as rocking-horse muck. (Something rare)
As much use as a chocolate teapot/fireguard (useless)
He's got long pockets and short arms (he's tight-fisted)
He's as tight as a gnat's chuff/duck's a**e (see above!)
I'll go to the foot of our stairs (an expression of surprise -never actually used this one myself)
This 'aft (this afternoon)
Summat (something)

Can't think of any more at the moment! :)
 
direstraits said:
This is something that's very familiar to Chinese Malaysians or Singaporeans. There's a suffix we use for almost anything: "lah"/"lar".

"So hot lah" - very hot
"Give it to me lah!" - conveys irritation
"Come with us lah!"
"Can do this one lah" - extremely colloquial this one - insisting that something can be done.

Lots of other examples lah. Tired lah, listing all out. :)
Click to expand...

That's so weird, people do that in Liverpool too! And in the east coast of Scotland, you replace the word 'lah' and substitute 'ken'. Go figure....

My favourite is 'knee high to a brussel sprout', meaning when you were young, as in 'ahhh, back in the day, when I were knee high to a brussel sprout....' :p
 
Stewart said:
Help m'boab! (Comparison: Jesus Christ! or Oh no!)
Crivvens! (Comparisons: Damn!)
"Pure dead brilliant" - It was good.
Click to expand...

Wow, do people actually talk like that?! Thought they were just phrases out of the 'Oor Wullie' books I used to get for Christmas as a kid.... :D
 
novella, can you help me with pukka?

I get mint = cool (and I like it)

But I'm stuck tryin' to figure out how things get to pukka.


My nephew says "snap" instead of shit. As in "Oh Snap!!!!" when he makes a major mistake playing a video game.
 
There's a great article about texas sayings in the Texas monthly archives. Here's the link:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/ranch/sayings/hot.1.php

In my hometown (about an hour's drive from houston) they say, "Who are you from home?" when asking your maiden name. Or you might say, "She was a __________ from home."

For urban slang, I like urbandictionary.com.

Here in Houston, spanish words creep in quite a bit as well. I have a lot of friends (not of hispanic origin) that say "Hola" or "gracias" and I sometimes refer to my girlfriends as "chica". Mind you, I couldn't understand Spanish if my life depended on it.
 
Motokid said:
novella, can you help me with pukka?

I get mint = cool (and I like it)

But I'm stuck tryin' to figure out how things get to pukka.


My nephew says "snap" instead of shit. As in "Oh Snap!!!!" when he makes a major mistake playing a video game.
Click to expand...

Pukka is an Indian (Hindi or Urdu?) word meaning "proper." Wearing whites for cricket is pukka. It's used in England a lot, and my hub's English, so we picked it up. It's used to also mean "fine" or "nice"

We also imported "bugger off you blood sod," just for the fun of it.

I've heard "oh snap" too, but more as an exclamation of surprise.
 
Ashlea said:
Here in Houston, spanish words creep in quite a bit as well. I have a lot of friends (not of hispanic origin) that say "Hola" or "gracias" and I sometimes refer to my girlfriends as "chica". Mind you, I couldn't understand Spanish if my life depended on it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, growing up in NYC we called that Subway Spanish. "Aviso, la via del tren subterraneo es peligrosa." Stuff like that. I used to know a whole Marcal toilet paper ad in Spanish. You just sit there memorizing the ads on the way to school, and bingo, you're fluent in foot massage, venereal disease, subway safety, and toilet paper.

.
 
novella said:
jenn, those are cool. Are they particular to NS? I like the whore/onion one a lot.

RG, I think those are pretty ubiquitous. I live 3000 miles away frm you and know them all.
Click to expand...


the whore one i don't know if that is ns or maritime or what . i will investigate further for you. i love it too. it always raises a few eyebrows :D
 
We've got quite a few oddities here in PA. The influence of the Pennsylvania-Germans has people saying things like "Throw me down the stairs my shoes" for throw my shoes down to me from upstairs; or "Furhoodled" (I spelled in phonetically) for mixed up.
But, given that, my favorite is one that I haven't heard used outside my family - namely "Katie, bar the door!." You would use it, say, if you hadn't been able to buy a book for a year or so, and then found yourself in the world's biggest bookstore with a blank check. You get three or four books in your hand and then next thing you know its "Katie, bar the door". That is, it is usually used to refer to a situation that has either gotten completely out-of-hand, or is on the verge of doing so.
 
Sure you wanna open this can of worms? The Cajun culture is full of them.

make a mile (go home)
come see (come here)
make groceries (go grocery shopping)
hose-pipe (garden hose)
ice-box (refrigerator)
cookin' up a mess of _____ (making a big pot of fill-in-the-blank)

who was she before she got married? (inquiring about married woman's maiden name)

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll think of a few more.
 
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