He wouldn't say boo to a goose...

As a writer, one of the things I love about the English language is its richness.  Characters, objects, even scenes can be described in such an interesting and adventurous way using rich vocabulary that the writer is able to paint a fabulous picture in the head of the reader.

When I was a teacher in international schools, I would love to watch as children who were learning English as a second language grew in confidence and developed their range of vocabulary to include not just one word for what they wished to say, but two, three or sometimes even more.

Whenever these children would sit down to write a story, or even to produce a piece of non-fiction writing, out would come the thesaurus, and up would go their hands, as they searched for the perfect alternative to an ordinary or boring sounding word. 

Since most of my years in teaching were spent with children in Year 4 to Year 6, most of them knew of the different words types, e.g. verbs or doing words, nouns or naming words, adjectives or describing words, and adverbs or word describing a verb.  Some of the more advanced writers even knew about such things as proper nouns a word used to describe a person, place or organisation, and collective nouns a word describing a group of individuals.

The English language is rich with colourful and exciting words, as I’m sure other languages are too, but some of them are also just downright funny.  I was watching one of my favourite comedians while I was eating my breakfast this morning and he was talking about words and phrases that he found amusing.  Some of them are quite new, but some of them date back centuries to a time when people spoke very differently and used phrases that people nowadays no longer know the meaning of.

Here are just some of my favourite funny phrases from the past.

He wouldn’t say boo to a goose  

           

This was used to describe someone who was shy or timid and comes from as far back as the 16th Century. At that time a goose was thought to be a stupid bird, and saying boo in a loud or frightening way to a goose, or a child, was thought to be less brave than anything else.  This meant that very shy people were said to be so timid that they were not even able to say boo to a goose. 

You can do it until you’re blue in the face  

           

This one means that you can do something over and over again, but you are wasting your efforts, as you won’t get the result you want.

There were more (something’s) than you can shake a stick at     

       

This is one of my favourites, and could have meant that there were so many of something that you would have been unable to point or shake a counting stick at them, so you simply couldn’t count them all.

He’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail     

This one means that the person would return in the length of time it would take a lamb to shake its tail.

I’ll be back in a jiffy

This one is from way back in the 18^th Century and was first used by thieves to describe lightning, which possibly means that it means that someone will be back in the time taken for lightening to strike.  

If you do know any old or new funny sayings, you can email them to me and I will mention them and you on the website.