Southerners carry a longtime reputation for peculiarity. Everything from our country accents, to foods like fried green tomatoes and G.R.I.T.S. and really sweet tea, sets us apart. Growing up below the Mason-Dixon line, it never occurred to me as a child that we might seem strange or different to outsiders. It wasn’t until I grew up and made friends with people from other geographic regions (Yankees), that I noticed this quality of eccentricity. As a tribute to this weirdness, I compiled a list of creepy sayings, for which the South is particularly known.
If creepy sayings were somehow solidified, you couldn’t throw a rock in the South without hitting one.
- “He looked like death warmed over.”
- “A whistling woman and a crowing hen never come to a very good end.”
- “Between the Devil and the deep blue sea…”
- “In the dead of night”
- “Dead man walking!”
- “In high cotton”
- “She looked like she’d seen a ghost.”
- “Happy as a dead pig in the sunshine”
- “A bird in the house means a death in the family.”
- ”’Stop, drop and roll’ does not work in Hell.”
- “Drowning in your own tears”
- “He bled like a stuck pig.”
- “If you don’t stop that crying, I’ll give you something to cry about!”
- “You don’t believe in the devil? You should: He believes in you.”
- “She cut off her nose to spite her own face.”
- “Don’t kill the messenger.”
- “I’ll give up my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
- “Knocking on Death’s door”
- “That put the final nail in the coffin.”
- “Before the devil knows you’re dead.”
- “Cross your heart and hope to die; stick a needle in your eye.”
- “I need him like I need a hole in my head.”
- “As I was going up the stair, / I met a man who wasn’t there. / He wasn’t there again today, / I wish, I wish he’d go away!”
tayedmark 