A Phrase For Phriday

PJ, lovely PJ (bless her!) has suggested I could occasionally do a feature with English phrases that Americans might find funny, or confusing. To be honest I’m not sure I know what’s English, or maybe British, and what’s not, since we seem to have pinched so much of our language from others over the millennia. Equally, I might well attribute meanings to some of these sayings that are my interpretation, but totally wrong. Hey ho – life’s a bitch, eh?

If people abroad use the same phases and there’s nothing particularly homespun about what I include, then I apologise, but it’s just tough! (In case that’s an English expression, that means too bad, I don’t care, or something like that).

Anyway, sometimes it will be a single word and sometimes a phrase or saying, but I thought I’d give it a go at least. So…

 I’ll start with two phases that sound similar, but are very different:

1. He’s all dressed up like a dog’s dinner… which means what it says and the subject of the statement is wearing smart (maybe overly or uncomfortably smart) clothes for a particular occasion. Slightly more derogatory meanings are attached at times, but it’s essentially the same and depends much on context and tone of voice.
    
2. That’s a real dog’s breakfast… which means something is a mess, or just plain wrong, as in, “He tried to put the flat-pack furniture together, but he made a real dog’s breakfast of it,” – i.e. got it wrong, probably very wrong. An equivalent is “pig’s breakfast”.
    

However, as an aside and nothing to do with the explanation, I kind of feel it might be a bit unfair to criticise the poor guy in my example number two above. Have you ever tried to follow the instructions that come with flat-pack furniture? You often need a mind like a corkscrew – as well as several vital parts that you only realise are missing once you’ve already begun and can’t take it back!

Have a good weekend… 🙂