This is a thread of phrases similar to “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” from around the world, starting with this one… There’s a colourful old Swedish idiom that goes hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död. It means “the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead”
It’d be foolish of me not to mention here that my next book is called THE WHEEL IS SPINNING BUT THE HAMSTER IS DEAD: A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD IN IDIOMS, PROVERBS AND GENERAL NONSENSE. So if you want more idioms like the ones in this thread, please pre-order now (link in my bio)
@AdamCSharp My grandmother used this one ‘he/she’s neither use nor ornament’
@AdamCSharp Your thread reminds me of this song by Queen
@AdamCSharp the American South has a whole book's worth too, I'm sure.. “He's dumber than a box of rocks” “That boy wouldn't be able to pour water out of a boot even if the instructions were written on the bottom”
@AdamCSharp Oh I say a few tomatoes short of a salad Love this thread!
@AdamCSharp My grandmother had one, “He doesn’t have two thoughts to rub together.”
@AdamCSharp Lol. A landscape laborer in Ireland used that phrase with me last year. It was the first time I had heard it. He was referring to… politics in America.
@AdamCSharp Morning, Adam. I'm definitely buying this. Have you got a link that isn't Amazon? I looked on Hachette and it wasn't clear how to order.
@AdamCSharp My Yorkshire dad used to say ‘a few flakes short of a crumble’ and ‘if they had another brain cell it would be lonely.’
@AdamCSharp It's an inside baseball idiom, but in the winemaking business, it's "a few Brix shy of a load." Explanation: Grape contracts sometimes specify minimum degree of sugar ripeness for a truckload of grapes to be accepted at the winery. Some of these loads don't quite make the grade.
@AdamCSharp @IvorGCampbell I loved Noel Gallagher's comment on Liam: "He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup."
@AdamCSharp I think the Icelandic phrase 'did not tie his bags with the same knots as his fellow voyagers' covers it. Another one is 'he does not carry his intellect in a cross bag'.
@AdamCSharp We have so many in Argentina. - Turtles run away from you (se te escapa la tortuga) - You're missing a few players (le faltan un par de jugadores) And a rare one: - You spin the square tile on Tetris (jugas al tetris y giras el cuadradito)