Idiosyncrasy

[threemonkeys]

I just ate a delicious pear. In my opinion, it was perfectly ripe. Pears are tricky things - they go from under-ripe to over-ripe very quickly. I was reminded that in my family, there was a notion that a pear was only perfectly ripe for half an hour. By extension from that, people would say that something was in its half hour meaning that it was at its peak - they applied it to anything, not just pears. I only ever heard this notion of a half hour ripeness and the extension used by members of my extended family on my mother's side. Has anybody else heard it? I do wonder if it something that our family came up with. But it could easily be a regional piece of wisdom that the family carried to a new land..

Many things get passed down in families. Obviously genetics and inherited objects but also knowledge. The thing is, the knowledge boundaries are fuzzy. Things like family history are fairly obvious - they relate directly to the family. But bits of lore or techniques (e.g. recipes) are a bit tricky to ascribe an origin to. Sometimes the things that you think of as family knowledge are more widely known. I suspect that this is more common than you might realise. Alternatively things you think of as common knowledge turn out to be just known by your family. That can be embarrassing at times. My parents had a habit of naming local landmarks according to their own system rather than using the "official" names. As kid, that confused me.

Does anybody have any family lore they want to share - proverbs or sayings and the like?

Comments

[catsluvdmb.livejournal.com]

So, this is more regional than family, but where I grew up if someone told you something outrageous or something you couldn't believe, you would usually say, "Shut up!" Kind of along the lines of "Get Outta Here!"

Yeah, no one says that in NC. It's gotten me quite the dirty look a couple of times lol.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I have heard that usage before but it certainly isn't as universal as "get outta here".

[russellk.livejournal.com]

My mother in law always responsed to anyone who said they had a sore stomach by saying 'Rub it with a brick'. Apparently this and many other equally looney offerings came from her mother. I have no idea whether this is individual or regional, though I haven't heard it anywhere else.

This woman was interesting. She got married (again) at 88 years of age. The ceremony was at my wife's house (before I knew her) and TV turned up. The reporter asked her, tongue in cheek, if she'd be starting a family. Without hesitation she replied 'No, I'm on the pill.'

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I've never heard 'Rub it with a brick' either. It's a good one.

[stephanie-pegg.livejournal.com]

"There is no rhyme for orange,
there isn't one I swear:
I searched and searched
and searched and searched,
then wrote a poem about a pear."
-- David Schwartz (aka Cat's flatmate)

I've heard the phrase "Shut Up!" in a movie, actually, as said by Julie Andrews, but that was a euphemism she'd picked up from her young and hip grand daughter. (The Princess Diaries 2)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

*g* I like that a lot. I can but offer the following from billcasselman.com.

"Quoth the anonymous seer of our tongue: “No word in the English language rhymes with orange, month, silver, or purple.”

Oh really, Dr. Johnson?

Well, you are wrong, O expert with the vocabulary of a beach pebble. You are dead wrong about every word in that sentence claimed to have no rhyme.

Orange rhymes with sporange. British botanists stress the last syllable; Americans stress the first syllable, making it a perfect rhyme for orange. Yes, it is a rare word. Its more common father is sporangium, the little capsule or receptacle that holds spores in certain species of fungi, molds, and ferns.

Also rhyming with orange are related words in botany: hypnosporange, macrosporange, and megasporange.

Let us compose a modest ditty illustrative of this blissful rhyme.

Oh I gave my love an orange, an orange,
And she gave me a toxic megasporange.
So sorry dear, said she, it’s morning you’ll wait till
Because the fern spore is likely to be fatal. "

[stephanie-pegg.livejournal.com]

And where, I ask, are your rhymes for month, silver and purple, sirrah!

;-)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Here. (http://www.billcasselman.com/wording_room/no_rhyme_for_orange.htm) No Poems though.

[stephanie-pegg.livejournal.com]

He had to search damn hard through the turgidly turbid realm of dialect, archaic and technical vocabularies to do it, though.

;-)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Not everyday words, I agree. On the other hand, not bad for a task considered impossible.