stamp copyright © Canada Post

these are sample sayings

from Volume 2

10 Canadian Ways To Refer To Winter Weather

1. It’s like sticking your head in a flour sack to get away from a tornado.

• Said in Newfoundland of a heavy snowstorm with high winds.

2. There’s so much salt on the roads in Canada, you get high blood pressure just taking out the garbage.

3. Colder than a polar bear’s pyjamas on the shady side of an iceberg.

4. So cold this morning, after my dog went out for a whizz, I had to chop him off a tree trunk.

5. Brass beavers look out!

• A Canadian way of using the old warning about the testicular appendages of a brass monkey

6. There’ll be rubber ice out there today.

• Rubber ice, among other winter circumstances, refers to driving a team of horses across buckling ice that just holds the cutter and team, but bends in waves as the team and horses progress across the ice.

7. Cold as a well-digger’s arse in the Yukon .

8. It’s cold out, especially if you leave it out.

• A penile pun on a common weather report.

9. It was so cold outside this morning, before I could take a piss, I had to chop a hole in the air.

10. It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off Golden Boy.

• Set in place in 1919, the gilt statue atop the dome of the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg is the best known provincial symbol of Manitoba . Golden Boy is a runner suggested by classical representations of Hermes or Mercury, messengers of the gods. Golden Boy carries a sheaf of grain in his left hand and a burning torch in his right, and looks northward to Manitoba ’s future.

Before restoration in 2002         After restoration

All these and more Canadian weather words appear in my three volumes of Canadian Sayings.

© 2005 William Gordon Casselman

...................................................................................

The Vocabula Review is one of the best current online journals about language. I'm a columnist there and hope you will visit Vocabula online.

Do so by clicking on the logo provided above or below. There is a modest annual subscription fee for reading the linguistic probings and jeux d'espirit of some of North America's best writers on language (he said with all due lack of humility). But you may taste an enticing free sample of Vocabula content by visiting the website www.vocabula.com or by clicking the top or bottom logo.

.............................................

This is the last page of samples from Canadian Sayings 2.

Order the book online.

Return to First Page of CanSay2 samples

HOME

......................................