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"That'll fly like a galvanized brick."

"Y'all are peaches." (Friend originally from Louisiana used this one)

"Worse'n sugar in a spun hurricane."

And another British culinary recipe "Toad in the Hole".

Kotik wrote:I'm probably more familiar with british phrases, like "dumb as a brick", "queer as 37 pound note", "making a monkey's breakfast of it"... etc. But I could see that Trip picks up some of these over the years from Malcolm.

I like that last one!! I've never heard of those last two or any of the European ones Panyasan mentioned:

Panyasan wrote:French: crever
German: den Löffel abgeben (give away the spoon)
Italian: crepare
Spanish: estirar la pata ("stretch the leg") or colgar los guayos'' ("hang the football shoes")

In fact, I've heard every one of the southern phrases brought up so far but the first time I ever stumbled across the phrase "it went pear-shaped" in something online I had to go look it up to figure out what it meant. I was amused to find it had it's own wikipedia entry.

LOL my friend who lives in Canada is betaing for me (she's not a member here) I had to explain to her when Trip used "Get the hell out of Dodge" it never occured to me that, that one isn't famous enough. But for the record... Dodge city is an old cattle down in Missouri it was considered the most Violent city in America in the Olden days. Getting "the hell out of Dodge" means getting out of a dangerous situation.

WG, I believe that Dodge was in Kansas

Sometimes I get the two states Mixed up.

Trip reminds me a lot of a friend of mine originally from Alabama. To someone who isn't from that neighbourhood he at first comes off very much like a southerner, with the drawl, the gentleman and general social outgoing attitude and you actually think you hear things he isn't really saying or at least not as often as you think (like expressions and such). Yes, they're from the south but the accent is more just hinting where they're from, and they use their background to take the edge off, because they're really very intelligent and well educated. It's like a social lubricant, making people think they're nice blokes with their feet on the ground.

When it comes to expressions it's sometimes the case that people who haven't got English as a first language actually are more familiar with them, because you actually study that side of the language. I have no problems with most expressions I come across, British or American, but it's because I have come across them in school and paid a lot of attention to them as part of my language studies after leaving school and living in the UK.