Scottish Kiss - How Quaint!

[scrapinpeg]

I don't understand these either. Except Russian roulette.
And a Puerto Rican facelift is clearly what we would call a Croydon facelift. Can you enlighten me on the others?

"Chinaman's chance" -- very unlikely

"Dutch uncle" -- an overly critical or easily offended type

"Irish confetti" -- I think this is when you chuck rocks at cops

"Dutch oven" -- pass gas under the covers and then pull them up over someone's head

"Indian giver" -- when you reclaim a gift that you'd given to someone

the facelift one is probably that too-tight hair pulled all the way back style. I've heard that referred to as a courthouse facelift, myself.

A Mexican Tuxedo is a jeans jacket with jeans. The Texas Tuxedo is the same thing, with a cowboy hat on top.

"Young Turks" are young up-and-comers with ability and attitude to match

In Russian Roulette, you pull the trigger on a revolver with one bullet, after spinning the barrel and pointing it at your own head.

In Polish Roulette, your gun has a clip.

[scrapinpeg]

It occured to me that there's a disproportionate number of phrases using the Dutch nationality. (For a decent list, see http://homepages.cwi.nl/~sjoerd/dutch.html.)

Why is this so? What makes the Dutch so worthy of such idiomatic immortality?

[Maeve_Mari]

Redneck - The original reference was first used to denote the Presbyterians of Fayetteville, Georgia most likely poor, Scotch-Irish farmers. Referss to the sunburned necks caused by working in the fields all day.

There is also a tale in which it referred to striking coal miners who wore red bandannas as a means of group identification.

Also interesting, the Afrikaans Rooinek, which literally means redneck, is a disparaging term the Boers used to apply to the British and later became associated with any European immigrant to South Africa.

[Larrison]

Re: Redneck. There's another supposed source of where this appellation came from. The areas of the South where this term was applied to the countrymen/ farmers is an area with very red colored soil. The story goes that "Red necks" came from the farmers who were out tilling their fields or working on the land all day -- and when they would come home, or into town at the end of the day the dust that would collect on the sweaty backs of their nexts was red colored. Hence, "Rednecks" for a countryperson in the SE who worked on the land for a living.

I always favored the story of the origin being the sunburned neck or the red bandanna around the neck to keep the sun off. But one of my friends from Huntsville AL related the the red clay soil was the local reason for the term "redneck". Fayettesville, GA, as in Maeve_Mari's story, is only about 150 miles from Huntsville. Red clay soil is pretty common in that part of the country. And the soil is very red -- here's a link to a picture.

http://tinyurl.com/doegl

[Have At You]

I heard someone use the phrase "Irish twins" a couple of days ago. What does that mean?

(I thought I was well-versed in the language of national derision, but clearly I was mistaken.)

[Maeve_Mari]

I heard someone use the phrase "Irish twins" a couple of days ago. What does that mean?

(I thought I was well-versed in the language of national derision, but clearly I was mistaken.)

It's when siblings (brothers, sisters, brother and sister) are born less than a year apart...