I promised you some idioms — and I have got some good ones. Down South on our vacation, my friends helped me remember quite a few that I wrote down to share with you. The people who settled in the hills and on the prairies used colorful language to describe people, attitudes, and situations. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the right phrase paints a scene in the mind even without a picture. Check these out:

• That shines like a pewter dollar in a mud hole.
• You are as slow as molasses in January.
• We’ll do ___________ the Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.
• If you lay down with the dog, you get up with the fleas.
• That is as old as the hills and twice as muddy.
• You can’t sling a cat without hitting someone we’re kin to.
• She is so stuck up she’d drown if it rained.
• He was “carrying the mail.” (going fast)
• It’s cold enough to kill hogs.
• We were so poor the mice had to eat out.
• He is as rough as a cob. (coarse, unrefined person)
• That is as ugly as a mud fence.
• He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
• Let’s head for the hills. (go home)
• You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
• She doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose.
• He looks like he was corn-fed. (plump baby)
• You look like you was sent for, couldn’t go, and when you got there nobody wanted you! (looking flustered)

Aren’t these great? I’m still collecting, so send me more if you think of them.

Thanks — Derek, Gina, Sandra, Rodney, and Mama!