Archaic phrases

[PaddyJoe McGillycuddy]

'How's the form?'
"Didn't fill it in yet"

[The Field Marshal]

"Curiosity killed the cat".

Used to be very common.
Not quoted much nowadays.

Idle curiosity and asking all sorts of impertinent questions is the order of the day.
Possibly a consequence of decline in respect for the individual due to media intrusiveness.

[Simon.D]

Britches (Brit-chiz)
i.e. Pull up those britches

Kilkenny relations used alway refer to pants in this manner, and probably still do..

[He3]

Neither a lender nor a borrower be

[The Underdog]

Penny wise and Pound foolish

[Johnny]

My family are from inner-city Dublin. These spring to mind, but there's tonnes more. I'll post them if they come back to me:

"That beats (bates) Banagher."
"She'd give a Panadol a headache, she's so noisy."
"I was handcuffed to the fountain with the thirst."
"She's falling away to an elephant." (Gaining serious weight)
"The height of him - if he fell over he'd be halfway home."
"He has patriotic hair - dyed for Ireland."
"Another spoke like that out of you, and you'll have a wheel."
"I'm bi.tched, bolloxed and bewildered with the lot of you."
"I have back, brain and bollock ache with the lot of you."
"Would you like a knuckle?" (Threat to a bold child)
"Would you like a knuckle for starters and a leg of duck for dinner?"
"She should be called "peninsula" - a long neck jutting out to sea (see)" (To nosy woman)
"If I'd a fiver I'd build a wall around it."
"A shut mouth catches no flies."
"The weather's very changeable - you wouldn't know what clothes to pawn."
"You're the heart of the rowl and the flower of the flock."
"More faces than Cleary's clock."
"A face like a plateful of mortal sins."
"He'd say Mass if he knew Latin."
"Get up the yard, there's a smell of Benji off you."

rossy - a common woman (rásaí)
streal - a common woman (sraoill)
to gawk - to stare
a decko - a look

[neiphin]

ya orange ********************

the worst thing you could call anyone

[milipod]

Poxbottle explain?

[euryalus]

What about "cack-handed" for left-handed. In the days before the widespread use of toilet paper people are said to have used their left hands to wipe their ani (that's Latin), hence left-handed meant "excrement handed" - cac or cack being the ancient Celtic word for faeces.

[Johnny]

cac or cack being the ancient Celtic word for faeces.

Cac is still the modern Irish word, as in Tá mo chac agam - "I have to defecate"