Asklemmy

Man the ones I grew up with were far far far more racist than the ones yall had.

"watch the ficus" - telling somebody to be more careful after they do something clumsy like tripping or nearly dropping something. I used it in front of some friends once and got confused looks. Apparently grandma used to have a potted ficus tree and used to tell me to watch it when I was playing close to it, so it stuck as a saying in the family.

A Dutch one I got from my Oma: "It's as if the angels upon my tongue have pissed". It means "yum".

The last one's very similar to a german saying: "Was man nicht im Kopf hat, muss man in den Beinen haben."

That literally translates to "What you don't have in your head, you have to have in your legs."

We have your last example in Croatia, usually told as: "they who don't have it in the head, have it in the legs"

"Dead meat is hung, live meat is hanged." Turns out most people's grandma's aren't radical leftist english teachers.

My mom often used two:

"Useless as tits on a bull" (often referencing her husband, my dad)

And also, "shit fire and save matches", which I never understood to actually have a meaning, it was more like just an exclamation of surprise.

To correct someone from saying "so" too much:

"Sew buttons on ice cream"

"Hey" too much:

"Hay is for horses"

"Well" too much:

"Well, well, well - that's three holes in the ground"

Micromanage much?!?!

Funny my grandad had a little rhyme related to your ketchup effect:

"If you do not shake the bottle, none'll come and then a lot'll"

Clearly ketchup bottles have been a bigger influence on culture than we realised

DEGUSTIBUSNONESTDISPUTANDUM

not sure I spelled it right, means "regarding personal tastes, there is no dispute"

Also another good one, "moderation in everything, including moderation."

Slickern owlshit

"Life's tough. It's even tougher when you're stupid."

-my grandfather quoting a line from a John Wayne movie I think.

You better finish your dinner, don't you know there are starving children in Africa?

“Does a hawks arse pucker in a power dive?” When someone asked a question that had an unequivocal answer of yes. Similar to does a bear shit in the woods,

My Grandmother used to say "It's better than a kick in the teeth" when deflecting disappointment in an outcome--putting a positive spin on a negative. Being from the UK it seemed universal, but moving to Canada and saying that, people gave me odd looks.

The other one is when somebody is talking nonsense or a bit crazy, they would say "They are out of their tree". For the Welsh the tree symbolizes stability and mental wellness (druids I guess) and if you were stressed or needed to chill their phrase translates to "I need to go back to my trees"

Not a family saying, but my grandad used this joke soooo often:

Q: What's the difference between a snake in the grass and a goose?

A: A snake in the grass is an asp in the grass, but a grasp in the ass is a goose!

My folks liked to purposefully mix metaphors, so instead of saying "The worm has turned", they'd say, "The shoe has turned" and "The worm is on the other foot".

I'm sure there's an origin somewhere, but since I don't know it, the call-out for doing something particularly dumb was, "Why don't you just ram your face into my fist?" (suggesting your stupidity was impressive, but not worth the actual bother of 'punishing' you for it, especially given you were probably stupid enough to punish yourself).

"Don't yuk somebody else's yum."

You might already heard this one but I didn't learn until a relatively recent internet meme that its only here in Norway that something being "complete texas" means its completely chaotic and messy.

Also I'm using "what the fir forest" ("hva i granskauen") as a replacement for "what the hell" and I have no idea where I've picked it up.. Nobody else around me do, not even family. Works just as fine though against pain and annoyances.

If you get hung in a rut, you better lock those hubs in. Cat get your tail out the fire!