WolfmanNougat said:
So, there's a couple of phrases I just don't get or seem backwards to me:
"Looks the dog's bollocks" = "looks good". I dunno about you, but I've never considered canine testicles to be a particularly pleasant sight. And for some reason whenever I hear the phrase I picture a bulldog. Not sure why.
"Allow that" a la "fuck that". Wouldn't allowing it mean welcoming it?
But the big cringer for me has always been comparing anything unfavourably to Hitler without any indication of irony. And that was long before I'd heard of Godwin's law. I'm pretty sure you're all mature enough to understand why I don't need to elaborate but suffice it to say that you'd have to do a lot of really nasty stuff on an astronomical level to even be considered equal to him, let alone worse. I get the implication but it's just a wee bit extreme, isn't it?
With regards to the bolded section, this is actually from a corruption of the original Meccano sets: 'box deluxe' and 'box standard'. If you switch the first letters of 'box deluxe', you get 'dox beluxe', which is then mangled slightly to produce 'dog's bollocks'. Likewise, 'box standard' was corrupted to form the phrase 'bog standard'.
Therefore, the two phrases reflect their original forms: 'dog's bollocks' to describe something that is of higher quality than usual, and 'bog standard' to describe something completely normal.
The more you know!
OT: I can't come up with anything I haven't already seen here, so I shall reiterate: 'I could care less.' Damn, it annoys me when people say that.
Also, 'the exception that proves the rule', taken the way most people use it, is a logical fallacy. Since it is a rule in its own right, that would mean there must be a rule out there without an exception to be an exception to this rule. However, said rule would not have an exception to prove it, and therefore would not be a rule, thus invalidating the exception that proves the rule 'the exception that proves the rule', which invalidates
that rule, causing it to contradict itself. Phew.