• From: Buffalo, NY
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Topic: Source of your favorite phrases

Thanks to last week's episode I've been re-reading (well, listening to) the Hornblower books. I haven't read them since I was a young teen, but they were my dad's favorite. That being the case, I shouldn't have been surprised that they were probably the source of one of his favorite words: 'gauche', which means either left handed or awkward and uncouth. Being a born lefty who was forced to be right handed, he liked the humor in it and playfully used the word with my left handed sister.

Anyone else have parts of their vocabulary that can be traced back to unusual places?

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  • From: Indiana, USA
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

If you're a lefty, not only are you gauche, you're also decidedly sinister.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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  • Trey
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

We're also not right, and are often left behind, left out, and get nothing but leftovers.  Oh look, here comes the left hand of God to give us a left-handed compliment...

Dammit, being left-handed is rough, I tell ya - the english language itself is biased against us.  Attica!  Attica!

If I was just a bit older I might even have been forced to write right-handed in school.    Fortunately that wasn't common practice anymore, or my brain would be even more screwed up than it already dipstick peanut balloon pants.

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  • Registered: 2010-01-26
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

So … um … Trey gauche.

Yeah.

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  • From: Indiana, USA
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

I've always had a fondness for this piece called "You are Quoting Shakespeare".

And I've long harbored a hope that one day Mr. Burns on The Simpsons would tell Smithers to call for a "taximeter cabriolet".

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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  • Kyle
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

As a wrestler, I use the words brother, gimmick, heel, baby, kayfabe, sell, work, and mark in many conversations that have nothing to do with wrestling.  And some of those terms are 200 year old carny talk.

When.

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  • From: Seattle, WA
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

Zarban wrote:

I've always had a fondness for this piece called "You are Quoting Shakespeare".

That piece pisses me off, because it ignores that 'Shake-Spear' was borrowing from his peers and predecessors, or simply using normal speech of the day.

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  • From: Indiana, USA
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

Yes, but it's like when people say "we don't need no steenking badges." They aren't quoting Treasure of the Sierra Madre. They're quoting Blazing Saddles, because that's the movie they heard it in. And for generations, English speakers have studied Shakespeare above all, and cribbed his turns of phrase endlessly.

And so it will be with Mel Brooks in 400 years.

Last edited by Zarban (2013-10-29 03:17:24)

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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  • Teague
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

I know it from UHF. Badgers.

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  • From: LA
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

I'll be honest, I recall and love movies, but I really don't seem to have the gene that allows for just remembering quotes from movies and being able to spit them back out.

That said, I want to say that some of the lines that I do quote the most, stem from some of the great one liners from the comedy classic Clue.

Yeah, not really deep by any means, but ... between that and MASH & Monty Python, they shaped my childhood, so they stuck somewhere back in my brain and keep coming out every now and again.

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  • From: Kent, England
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Re: Source of your favorite phrases

Sometimes it seems my only means of expression is via movie quotes. Here are few things that have crept into the exchanges I have with friends (it can be some obscure that some folks, especially girlfriends, look on in bewilderment):

Where the hell did that come from? What's going on here?  (Mallrats)

Eet's bullshit, the cabinet minister, all of eet. (Predator) - and over time "cabinet minister" has become shorthand for bullshit

Can somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in, where a man... (Batman) - then add whatever's bothering you

You're about as useful as a cock flavoured lollipop (Dodgeball)

Now cowboy the fuck up! (Tears of the Sun)

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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