Coming down stair-rods
felix
Does anyone have any spectacular idioms for heavy rain, taking
domestic pets as read? Or better still, a link to a web
resource....Ben? Ben?
felix
Garry J. Vass
news:430d1c32.01103...@posting.google.com...
The standard RightPondian expression is "it's absolutely pissing down".
This expression covers everything from a drizzle to the rains that caused
the floods last week.
Philip Eden
I copy with no apologies a piece which appeared in the (London)
Daily Telegraph some weeks ago:
<QUOTE>
The eighteenth century playwright and poet John Gay produced
a vivid description of London streets during a heavy summer
storm. Here is an extract from 'A Description of a City Shower':
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell
What street they sail'd from, by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force
From Smithfield or St Pulchre's, shape their course,
And in huge confluent join at Snow Hill ridge,
Fall from the Conduit prone to Holborn Bridge.
Sweepings from the butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud,
Dead cats and turnip-tops came tumbling down the flood.
This colourful picture may give a clue to the origin of the phrase
'raining cats and dogs'. Lexicographers do not agree about
its history but it is easy to imagine that, in any large town
or city in centuries past, a sudden downpour following a
long dry spell will flush out the remains of hundreds of
feral cats and dogs, and no doubt other scavening animals
as well. After the storm, once the floodwaters have
subsided, the random scattering of these creatures could
lead the more suggestible to believe that it had literally been
'raining cats and dogs'.
We have a large numer of expressions to describe heavy
rain in our everyday vocabulary. Most are pretty prosaic,
like 'pouring' and 'pelting'; some are rather more metaphorical,
like 'bucketing', 'belting' and 'throwing', or 'coming down in
sheets' or 'torrents'; others are inappropriate for a family
newspaper; while some suggest the effect rather than
the character of the downpour, like 'soaking' and 'drenching'.
Yet others describe the event rather than the rain itself, such
as 'deluge' and 'cloudburst' and 'tropical downpour'; there are
also a few words from regional dialects which are creeping
into the general language, like the northern English 'siling'.
Two rather more colourful expression which I quite like
are 'it's raining stair-rods' and 'it's raining pitch-forks'. It is
difficult to see where business end of a pitch-fork comes
into play, unless it describes the angle at which heavy driving
rain bounces back from a hard surface. As for stair-rods,
I used this in a radio forecast not long ago and was met
with blank looks from the other presenters in the studio.
Yes, they were under 30, had grown up in homes with
fitted carpets, and did not know what stair rods were.
Official weather observers do not have the luxury of the
marvellous vocabulary available to the rest of us. Logging
the weather on the hour, every hour, they are confined to
'slight', 'moderate' and 'heavy' to describe the intensity of
the rain, and 'intermittent' and 'continuous' to indicate its
persistence. And each of these words is very precisely
defined. Sad, isn't it?
<END QUOTE>
(The author gave permission to reproduce this here)
Question: Do we have any AUEers under 30, and if so
do they know what stair-rods are?
Philip Eden
Earle Jones
fel...@hotmail.com (felix) wrote:
*
In Texas I heard, "It's raining like a tall cow pissing on a flat rock."
earle
*
Dud Fivers
weather-guru-in-residence and that his column in that noble organ is
one of its most consistently informative and entertaining
institutions.
Jacqui
> Question: Do we have any AUEers under 30, and if so
> do they know what stair-rods are?
I am indeed under 30 (see remarks re decimalisation elsewhere) and I
know what stair-rods are, since my grandmother had them on her stair
carpets right up until 1996.
Jac