well I just discovered this thread and growing up in NZ (Southland ) I have to add some- silly as a wet hen
- running around like a hen without its head - put some murphys on the plate (spuds, potatoes)-a face like a wet Sunday- a few screws loose or missing (brain not functionning at full capacity)- nobody home upstairs (also casting doubt on brain functioning)

Is "ajar" really not used in the US? Surely the famous old Victorian joke is familiar - "When is a door not a door?"

(Well, they didn't have TV, remember: they had to make their own amusements).

Or:

Q: What three words come to a bride's mind as she enters the church for her wedding?

A:
Aisle
Altar
Hymn

You're as daft as a brush

I got wrong

Also, there's only 2 certainties in life

death and nurses

there's another one about fish but I'll leave that one for another day

Geordie

The door is ajar is fairly common in the US. When the first cars with brains came out and they talked to you my dad's always said "a door is ajar" when a door was open and the car was in gear.

Baldworth

One of the words you hardly hear lately is "nincompoop".Paul

We loved the signs that said "give way". Too funny.

How about:

Spending a penny...
or
Pointing Percy at the Porcelian.

Non-Brits should use care with newfound British sayings, though. My Mum was from Kent, and I seemed to be the only one of us 4 kids interested in our British heritage (I am the only one who has travelled to the UK). My sister came into the kitchen one day, stubbed her toe and said "bugger!" (she had picked it up from the film Robin Hood) and my Mum nearly had kittens! She was VERY offended!

Still, growing up in a quasi-British household, I never know where I've gotten different sayings I use - I've just grown up saying them. My boyfriend makes constant fun of me for saying "should do".

maybe a bit rude, but my absolute favorite expression from a colleague from Glasgow:

"She'll have me bollocks for earrings"

referring to his wife getting angry if he didn't pick up the kids in time, had one too many beers, etc.

Chuffin' hell &
Havin' a paddy

There's something that's only just occurred to me. You can have a paddy on your own (and I have in my time, believe me), but it takes two to have a barney.

In "The House of Stairs" by Barbara Vine one character says "You can't judge a sausage by its overcoat,".

I've never heard this. Is it a British saying of peculiar to this character?

A bun in the oven, or up the duff when someones pregnant. And, I've been up and down like a brides nightie, when your have to keep getting up for things

Peculiar to the character, jsmith. I read it as indicating someone who'd like to be thought of as humorous, but is actually as platitudinous as they would like to pretend not to be, by (as Basil Fawlty would put it) "stating the bleeding obvious".

Has anyone mentioned:

"Changed Priorities Ahead"

for a two-way street becoming a one-way street?

I saw this sign in Chelsea and thought the universe was speaking to me!

I read this in a book many years ago but I still don't understand it.

One character referred to another as being very "milk-in-first."

Now, I figure that refers to how one pours one's tea, do you put the milk into the cup first or the tea, and then the milk?

But what does it mean? What does it say about the person?

I've never figured it out.

It's an endless argument, but I suspect in context it could be as much a criticism of the person saying it as of the person it's said about. Almost certainly, the person saying it holds to the view that anyone who puts the milk in first is from the wrong side of the tracks (Not Quite One of Us, Dear - said behind the hand, in a whisper).

Another one for pregnant
In the club (short for in the pudding club)

Thank you, PatrickLondon, I had no idea. I was not even thinking along those lines...I was thinking perhaps it meant fastidious to the point of being a little controlling. That clears up a mystery.

Olive - aka they are a bit estuary!