She might end up "off in the weeds" if you don"t "Hold "er Newt!" Might weeds and rhubarb be interchangeable in the added expression?
Emmett
Shun buns is not a pallindrome. I can only presume that you meant "snub buns."
oops...palindrome
EmmettRedd said:
She might end up "off in the weeds" if you don"t "Hold "er Newt!" Might weeds and rhubarb be interchangeable in the added expression?
Emmett
I'd heard "Hold 'er Newt! She's headed for the barn," all my life (73 years). I was surprised that my husband, four years older than I and brought up in the same part of Alabama, claimed never to have heard it. Martha and Grant's comments about World War I probably explain why; my father and his brother who lived next door to us were both in WWI and my husband's father was a few years younger and was not. We did not have rhubarb on our farm, so I never heard that version. Our family farmed with mules or horses until after World War II, so it was quite a common expression, applied to all sorts of situations.
Ruby Jo Faust said:
I"d heard "Hold "er Newt! She"s headed for the barn," all my life (73 years).
I think I first ran across it in an old (1951?) book of tips for home movie-makers, as a caption to a picture of someone made to appear staggering drunk (the tip was to shoot from close to ground level to exaggerate the effect of unsteadiness).
A later folk expression that"s just as evocative is "Shut "er down, Scotty, she"s suckin" mud!"