One of the best ones is "bless your heart". You see, you can be as insulting as you want, as long as you finish with that saying. Ex: Hillary is a lying witch, bless her heart.

My Dad had an arsenal of these phrases, and he was raised in the Southwest.

If he noticed you were shivering in the cold...
"Boy, you're shakin' like a calf sh***in' peach seeds."

Show him your scrape or cut...
"I've had worse than that in my eye."

Hiking along the banks of a creek...
"Careful, that mud is slicker than greased owl crap!" That one never made much sense to me, but I was mindful of my footing. The times I wasn't, and wound up on my butt, he would reach down to help me up. Followed by...
"Well 'Grace', do you need more practice walking?"

His timing and delivery were usually perfect. I miss him.

oh, and there are more:::

frog-strangler = heavy rainstorm

tits on a boar hog = useless (something)

bend your ear = talk with you

grinnin' like a mule eatin' a sawbriar = wide grin

I will remember more ... -- j
.

One you didn't mention is "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." That actually has its origins from naval military gear. Muzzle loading cannon needed to have the ammo (balls) nearby for rapid reloading, and to keep them in place a brass plate with indentations was designed to allow a stack of balls held in place without rolling around (not sure why the plate was called a "monkey"). Due to the difference in expansion and contraction of the iron balls and the brass monkey, if the temperature dropped enough, the balls could roll off the monkey.

I'm "fixing to do something" about that. English translation: I'm going to do something about that.

From a Texan, "It's all scrambled up like a dog's breakfast."

Another one. I ignore whether it was Tennessee or Kentucky where I heard this expression, and I'm applying it at the same time (as pronounced):
"I don' pay it no ne'er mine."

And I actually beat a student once with a wet noodle. I was teaching an AutoCAD class, and 5 weeks into a 6 week class, one student still hadn't figured out the difference between the actions of the left and right mouse buttons, in spite of my careful explanations. I saw that the student was about to use the wrong mouse button, and I warned him that if he got it wrong, I would flog him with a piece of spaghetti from the leftover lunch bin. He clicked the wrong button, and when I hit him in the hand with the limp piece of spaghetti, he intoned, "I deserve it, I deserve it."

My grandpa was an Okie. He had a bunch of em...

"I hope to shit in my mess kit." was one of my favorites. He had been in the Navy for 20 years during WWII. He had another one that I don't say. He'd tell a story and complete it with, "If that aint true there aint a &%$ in Georgia." You can guess what word he put there. It's a word I don't say.

I do miss him. We lost him too young, 65. It was probably the hardest I ever wept...

I've lived in North Carolina all my life, and I've never heard three of those sayings. I think my favorite Southern saying is "bless your heart". It is a nuanced expression with several meanings depending upon the context.

Funny. I heard a new one last year: "Hotter than two squirrels fxxkyyg in a wool sock". That one cracks me up.

The expression about the hare is mistaken, as far as I can tell. The actual phrase that I know is "a hair across his ass (or arse)" and refers to an error in attaching the crupper of a driving harness to the horse. The crupper is a loop that passes around the tail to help hold the rest of the harness from sliding fore-and-aft on the horse. If you get one of the hairs of the tail caught underneath the crupper then the horse will become rather surly about driving, swishing his tail back and forth in annoyance.

In case anyone is wondering, yes, I do know how to drive, either single or pair. My wife, more talented than I, can also drive four-in-hand, and let me tell you, it is an art to keep four horses going straight down the road, and even more of an art to keep the whole rig from flipping over into a ditch when you take a corner. "Don't cut corners."

One Southern expression I've noticed is, "Well bless your soul." Those words can mean anything from, "I'm so sorry you have to be YOU," to "Damn you to hell," but are said by someone who would never utter either damn or hell.

I didn't realize these were southern. I grew up in Iowa, and we said many of these phrases.

Jeff Foxworthy has made a career on Southern colloquialisms. He and Larry the Cable Guy are doing a show in "little old" Melboring (I mean Melbourne, FL) in just over a month. "Well, I'll be."

My husband who is a Southerner, pronounces Louisville, KY kind of like, "Lullvul." Even though I come from Detroit, MI, I've always liked "Kiss my grits."

“Born on third and thought he hit a triple.”

I do not like the comments in the article on several of these sayings (including the above) and I would like to morph them a bit. How about,
"Didn't matter that he was born on third, 'cause he hit a triple."

Jan

In Michigan, we had a few of those listed, here are a couple that I'll let you figure out.
She's so stuck up she thinks her tits are made of gold.
He has so many friends that he's usually alone.

I was raised in Augusta County (Va.) by parents
who were from Iowa and Minnesota They often
scolded me for speaking with a Southern accent.
Now I can speak with either accent, but generally
favor an Augusta County twang.
I don't remember ever seeing an outhouse
like the one in the picture. We actually had one
for 3 years on Jarmans Gap Road (I've heard
that the name of the road has changed). But
I understood that an outhouse was made of
wood, and had a roof in one piece, which sloped, but did not go in different directions from
the middle.
I don't remember hearing most of the expres-
sions in that article. I do know that "y'all" (con-
traction for "you-all") is supposed to be a plural
pronoun exclusively, and never to be used in
the singular.

If you know to step on the tail of a road kill possum before picking it up - you`re probably from the South.

Bama dino thought people in other parts of the country said such things but only with different accents.
I do know all y'all don't say y'all, though.
In Bama "hey" often replaces "hi."
My son of a Swedish immigrant father once told me that "hey" is the word for "hi" in Sweden.

Whipping one with a wet noodle might be something like what I started recently: "Just because I'd like to give ya a bob upside your head, doesn't mean I hate you...I just would like to see if I can reboot your brain".

Stems from the misuse of the word "Hate" which must always include 'physical' animosity.

My dad's from Kentucky, and I never heard any of his family use those phrases.
My mom, however, who is Canadian, has in the past said “Back teeth are floating”.

My best friend's grandma (died 40 years ago, raised in Missouri), was fond of saying, on hot days, "I'm sweating like a Ni**er on election day."