Things Your Grandparents Used to Say
Expressions used by your ancestors to colorfully communicate life's lessons
4.5 by 7 inch, perfect bound, 250 pages
To be published 2006
List price: TBD
Retailer discount for 5 or more - 40 percent

PREFACE

Be they called idioms, expressions, clichés, proverbs, adages or just plain sayings, the speech of your grandparents was certainly more colorful. They drew heavily on their occupation and a predominately rural life often taking examples from the farm such as, “Uncle Jack is as dumb as a fox”, meaning, of course, just the opposite.
One characteristic of these sayings is word-synergy. The meaning of the words, both individually and collectively, do not necessarily tell the whole story. For example, “A few bricks short of a load” literally might imply someone did not get their money's worth, but when referred to an individual it means, in today's lexicon, mentally-challenged.
Depending on the occupations of your ancestors, their ethnic and religious backgrounds and their geographic locations, the expressions they used to communicate would likely be different. Someone in the building construction business probably would have said of the mentally challenged individual “His elevator didn't go all the way to the top,” while a mechanic might have said, “He has a loose screw,” perhaps also implying the individual was a little crazy.

The significance of a saying is its simple eloquence for easily, although not necessarily unambiguously, communicating a thought in a colorful manner. When overused they become clichés and like any spent activity lose their value. Most expressions, however, exist in more than one form such as an old saying for a predicament used to be “I'm in a pickle,” but today the choice would more likely be “I'm between a rock and a hard place.”
For this endeavor the sayings are grouped into categories where the heading more or less defines the expressions. A Table of Subjects includes many cross-references that allow the user to easily find a saying, which expresses a particular thought.
In those cases where the reader wants to know the precise meaning of a phrase, the bibliography in the back of the book provides a number of references for both the meaning and origins.

The reader's attention is particularly directed to one section called Advice. Collected here are the distilled and pithy sayings from your parents and grandparents that provide years of wisdom in a succinct form. Many of these still can still be used today to guide our children and grandchildren in their daily living.
This book is for fun. Enjoy it and expand your vocabulary with idioms, proverbs, and adages that will add a little spice to your life and to those around you.

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