Rolling thread for expressions & idioms I do not understand

I am sometimes thick and overly literal, and I'm not afraid to mention it.

"Watch the pennies and the pounds will follow"

This seems like bad fiscal advice, and I don't even know what it means metaphorically.

Like, watch the minor details and the major details will take care of themselves? Because that isn't true.

"Watch the pennies and the pounds will follow"

I think this saying presupposes that every pound is made up of pennies and therefore should be watched, too. This is not very explicit though.

WRT the tail wagging the dog, I think it is pointing out that some subsidiary consideration is taking too central a position in guiding the outcome, and it wittily emphasizes the the ridiculous nature of that by reducing it to nonsense.

"A stitch in time saves nine" has always confused me. Nine what? Stitches I suppose...???

"Don't let the tail wag the dog"

LOL i don't know that i've heard this. it's pretty absurd.

yes i think nine stitches! that one at least sounds good

Yup. That one stumped me for a very long time, too.

It is a variation on the ounce of prevention theme. You should stitch up a rent in your clothes immediately before it tears and unravels and becomes nine times larger.

Yes, it took me forever to figure out how "in time" works there.

Because I had heard of the phrase, but never heard it used in a context where it meant anything, just as a sort of empty reference, or a thing to be punned upon.

I guess "A Wrinkle In Time" didn't help.

i think tail wagging the dog also implies letting a priori assumptions create "reality" through doublespeak and spin and such. x-post.

Didn't we just have this thread, a little while ago?

Misunderstanding of the stitches one is a good argument for the importance of commas: "A stitch, in time, saves nine."

(commas or em-dashes or parentheses, I guess)

oh haha i finally get the stitch saying now! wrinkle in time confusing "in time" is otm.

but yeah, commas.

haha i always thought of 'in time' re: 'a wrinkle in time' too! i mean, i knew what the expression was saying but not really what it meant!

idioms are probably my favourite thing about language

"If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, paint it."

Whenever I try to apply this, people look at me like I am crazy. Why?

Unless you're a military trainee (which that quote is meant to describe), I'm not sure how often you'd have cause to use it ...

This is Kipling, by the way:

We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it Art ?"

Here I thought I had chosen the wrong color of paint.

Will ye have a drug

you guys seriously don't get these?

(Haha I am trying to identify a branch of the military that can claim the salute/paint thing, and it seems to have claims across all of them -- but part of me just assumes it's a navy thing, since they'd have to do all that constant painting against salt air and rust)

Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
Do not put all yuor eggs in one basket.

Apparently, it is utterly taboo to count your eggs (for what else is 'chicken before it is hatched', but an egg?) and yet mandatory to count the baskets your eggs are in.

But what if you have only one egg in each basket? This would cause a dire collision of imperatives!

'oils ain't oils'

what is this boring nonsense, i don't want to wonder about it ever again.

oils is some kind of English bigwig with a garter, right?

the thing of it is, i don't know if he is, or he ain't.

oils ain't oils!

!!!

No one understands what I mean when I say "a cat may look at a king." I didn't make this up!

'Stitch in time' wasn't hard for me thanks to this Bugs Bunny cartoon.

there were six children in my family and over the years there were quite a few fights about someone looking at someone else and the one being looked at taking exception to it and screaming, 'tell him/her to stop looking at me,' and our mother would say, 'a cat may look at a king,' which would generally make the cat smug and triumphant and the king sulky.

you know what thought did? it followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding

pissed its bed and thought it was sweating

'oils ain't oils' isn't really an idiom though right? it's just an advertising slogan from castrol. like there's oil...and then there's castrol GT-X oil

One of mum's which always baffled me:

"Dont care was made to care
And made to care was hung"

I think it sometimes went on to say "made to care was put in prison and made to hold his tongue" or some shit. WTF.

don't care was made to care
don't care was hung
don't care was put in a pot
and boiled till he was done

my grandfather used to recite that in a ghoulish voice to encourage us to be positive and engaged. he also said that if we went too close to the edge of the concrete terrace in his garden we would fall off and crack our heads open and die and he would have to bury us next to the rhubarb.

"a cat may look at a king." I didn't make this up!

This originally comes from Proverbs. It basically means that the majesty of kings is not really so awful and majestic as they pretend it is. They must live in an everyday world, among everyday occurences.

I just spent about ten minutes unsuccessfully trying to confirm what I recall as an epigram written by John Skelton (1460-1529):

A cat may look upon a king, but what of that?
The king is still a king, the cat, a cat.

estela your grandad sounds awesome. I just googled that phrase and my mum had it wrong all these years, well I never.

he was great, but i probably still don't care about whatever it was.

Haha :)

Does the expression "selling yourself short" have any connection to selling a stock short? Does one come from the other, or do they have a mutual ancestor, or is it just a coincidence?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZb3kvGICr0

had a friend who liked to spring this q on certain new ppl when he was drunk & slightly aggro