Craft Chat For the Love of Language

[Claire G]

I just came across a phrase that I love and I thought I'd start a thread where we can share our favourite examples of language at its finest, whether because it's beautiful, humorous, quirky, figurative...whatever!

The phrase was: peppering with questions

I also love:
mad as a box of frogs
frosty wind made moan (from the song In the Bleak Midwinter)
star-spangled banner
streams of mercy never ceasing (from the hymn Come Thou Fount)

I could go on forever, but over to you!

 

[mickleinapickle]

Cold as a fire of ashy coal (from an old song)

 

[Claire G]

Cold as a fire of ashy coals (from an old song)

Spanish Lady?

 

[mickleinapickle]

Spanish Lady?

Where oh where is the Spanish lady, neat and sweet about the soul.

 

[Claire G]

Where oh where is the Spanish lady, neat and sweet about the soul.

Whack-from-the-too-rah-loo-rah?

 

[mickleinapickle]

Whack-from-the-too-rah-loo-rah?

Best phrase yet!

 

[Claire G]

Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

 

[Claire G]

Not waving, but drowning

This one gets me every time

 

[Sedayne]

My favourite line I've read this year?
...the cold air from within pebbles my nipples.
by @Claire G

 

[Rich.]

peppering with questions

She was salt of the earth, so he peppered her with questions.

Cold as a fire of ashy coal (from an old song)

My wife, who is Spanish, would say, "¡Este viejo tiene mala leche!" (This old bloke has bad milk!)

Tener mala leche = to have bad milk; that is, to be spiteful, bitter or grumpy

--

I've always agreed with Tolkien about the beautiful sound of cellar door.

 

[Rich.]

Where oh where is the Spanish lady, neat and sweet about the soul.

"¡Este viejo tiene mala leche!" (This old bloke has bad milk!)

Just to be clear, Mick, this is a reference to the bloke at the end of the song, not to you! I suddenly panicked and thought this could be misread.

 

[mickleinapickle]

Just to be clear, Mick, this is a reference to the bloke at the end of the song, not to you! I suddenly panicked and thought this could be misread.

No problem, Rich. I understood. Great phrase either way.

 

[Rachael Burnett]

‘We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them’ - John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi.

I also love that Stephen Fry used part of it in one of his fab novels.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Spanish Lady?

Love that song. The Dubliners do a lovely version. I've gone from neat and sweet about the sole to ashy coals.


The irish have so many. :"She'd the face of a bulldog chewing a wasp" "He's so handy he could knit a cat a new arsehole."

 

[Vagabond Heart]

"He's so handy he could knit a cat a new arsehole."

What ... what does that even mean?

 

[Vagabond Heart]

From The Lady's not for Burning.

Reply from a son, on being asked to do something by his mum (Oh, how I sympathise with her).
"Mother, I'd as soon kiss the bottom of a Barbary Ape."

 

[Sedayne]

Curtains drawn upon unfriendly night
WB Yeats, After Long Silence

 

[Rachael Burnett]

Anything that Langston Hughes wrote.

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

 

[mickleinapickle]

then my heart with pleasure fills
and dances with the daffodils