Digging Up Daisies.

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29 Apr 2023, 4:26 pm

How do people dig up daisies when they die? Why are they digging up daisies anyway? Why dasies? Why not daffodills, bluebells or brambles or something? Do they have heart attacks while digging? Where does the saying come from and what did it origionally mean?

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29 Apr 2023, 4:40 pm

The actual idiom is "pushing up daisies"

Quote:

“Pushing up daisies” and variations of the same phrase with different flowers date to the mid-19th century. Some records have it appearing in 1860 while others date the idiom to earlier, sometime during the First World War. There is a wonderful example of the phrase in Wilfred Owen’s poem, ‘A Terre.’ Lines from that section of the poem read:

I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone.”

Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned;

The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.

“Pushing up daisies,” is their creed, you know.

An earlier reference that almost uses the phrase appeared in 1838 in a poem with the line, “And under the daisies, you’ll cock up my toes.” Earlier still, a line by Victor Hugo, the famed French novelist, reads “être mort, cela s’appelle manger des pissenlits par la racine” or “to be dead, that is called to eat dandelions by the root.”

Other sources suggest that the phrase originated in British military slang in the First World War. In a letter written by Lieutenant W.H. Roy in May of 1915, he writes these lines:

After a time, it’s got to come that you either push up the daisies and enrich the soil a bit, or else you lie still and hold up a few bedclothes for a space of time depending on the circumstances.

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29 Apr 2023, 4:41 pm

In Poland, when you are dead, other people use this colloquial slang expression according to which, you "sniff daisies (or flowers as such) from the bottom" then but I don't know where this very expression comes from I just checked the pushing up daisies term though on the net and that's the result: https://grammarist.com/usage/pushing-up-daisies/

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29 Apr 2023, 4:44 pm

Irulan wrote:

In Poland, when you are dead, other people use this colloquial slang expression according to which, you "sniff daisies from the bottom"

I love it. :heart:

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29 Apr 2023, 4:51 pm

There are so many idioms that are quite funny if you think closer about them: like "to get a cat over something" when you are very stressed or "to have a cat" when you are just obsessed in the positive way with some thing/issue Like: I literally started to get a cat out of this stress. Or: I have a cat over cats (when you are a crazy cat lover) .

Speaking of the death related idioms in turn, we, Poles, say that someone dead, literally kicked the calendar and not that they kicked the bucket like you do

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29 Apr 2023, 4:55 pm

Why kick a bucket? Maybe it hurts ones toes so much one dies.

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29 Apr 2023, 5:16 pm

Mountain Goat wrote:

You turn into "organic fertilizer" when they bury you and you enrich the soil above you...and make the daisies grow faster. Or thats how always envsioned it. So you..."push up daisies".

Kicking the bucket is wierd to us who are removed from life on the farm. I had look it up some time ago myself.

It comes from placing a bucket under the animal's neck when you slaughter it (for food or put it out of its misery or whatever)to catch the blood. And often the animal struggles and kicks the bucket over. Or thats according to Wiki.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 29 Apr 2023, 5:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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29 Apr 2023, 5:17 pm

You may not want to know the origin of kick the bucket MG so don't open the spoiler unless you want to read about animal slaughter and suicide.

Show Spoiler

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29 Apr 2023, 5:24 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

You SO distorted it that I couldnt even decipher what you were talking about. Glad that Recidivist figured out what you were talking about.

MG & me both speak a unique version of South Walian English commonly referred to as Wenglish.

Some common words used in Wenglish include "butti" for "mate", "tidy" for "good" and "ych a fi" for "disgusting".

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29 Apr 2023, 5:30 pm

I'd prefer that to the average afterlife, which is bit full-on what with all the judgement and eternity and stuff. Just put in a calm, helpful day's work shoving vegetation up through the ground.

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29 Apr 2023, 5:52 pm

Recidivist wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

You SO distorted it that I couldnt even decipher what you were talking about. Glad that Recidivist figured out what you were talking about.

Yes. Some of our sayings are different. Such as like saying "I will do it in a bit now" which to some seem like two entirely different meanings but to us it makes sense.
Or "See those two houses on the hill up there? Mines the one in the middle". Lots of sayings from here.
And another extremely common thing from these parts is using knick names. So common that one can know someone by their knick name and never know their real name until one attends their funeral. (When they die).

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Last edited by Mountain Goat on 29 Apr 2023, 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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29 Apr 2023, 5:52 pm

Here it’s popping up daisies.
A good read on the origins.
https://www.quoteikon.com/pushing-up-daisies.html

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29 Apr 2023, 6:13 pm

Mountain Goat wrote:

Can't say I've heard the house expression before, seems more like a joke about Wenglish. But I have heard 'I'll be there now in a minute' , 'Where you to?'.

My GF is from West Wales and up there they usually call a person by their first name and professions e.g. Dai The Milk (milkman), Wyn Butcher etc

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naturalplastic
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29 Apr 2023, 6:37 pm

"butti" sounds like "buddy".

Americans say "buddy", "bud", or "bub" (when most Brits would say "mate"). Maybe Americans got that from the Welsh.

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29 Apr 2023, 6:41 pm

The origin of Bubba. :lol:

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29 Apr 2023, 6:42 pm

^^ Maybe. To confuse the matter even more, Brits call a sandwich a butty, so you could say, "Wanna butty butti?"

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