After the
workout…
Rockabilly: Do you need to
take a shower?
Bruce: I’m clean as a
whistle, cool as a cucumber, sweet as.
Rockabilly: Sweet as?
Bruce: You know. I’m good.
Rockabilly: Good as gold? So
how do you end “sweet as”?
Bruce: You don’t. The
expression stops right there.
Rockabilly: Sounds like an
unfinished simile.
Bruce: Or an empty simile.
Rockabilly: Where do they
use this?
Bruce: My neck of the woods.
Downunder. Say “sweet as” to an American and they wait for you to finish it.
Rockabilly: You noted my mystified look.
Rockabilly: You noted my mystified look.
_________
Voice-over
The list of similes built on
“sweet as” is extensive. “Sweet as honey” (Homer), “sweet as damask roses," (Shakespeare), “sweet
as if angels sang” (Shelley). The unfinished "sweet as" is a common New Zealand expression. As vacuous as the
contemporary reliance on “awesome.”
...
2 comments:
Fantasmique! Why, it's just like.
…"kangaroos loose in the top paddock?" (eccentric)
…"go off like a frog in a sock?" (go berserk)
…"face like a dropped pie?" (pug ugly)
Plenty of Strines seem to have the gift of the gab...
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