Tag Archives: phrases

Dad’s Favorite Sayings

AGE: 59

DATE OF PERFORMANCE: 02/19/2025

LANGUAGE: English 

NATIONALITY: American 

OCCUPATION: Doctor 

PRIMARY LANGUAGE: Korean

RESIDENCE: New York 

For context, my dad is a very dry and sarcastic man.

Interviewer: Are there any particular phrases you remember growing up hearing? Or any of your own that you use?

TL: “No.” [Proceeds to think of any phrases he uses]

Interviewer: Oh well I remember your most common one: “Suck it up buttercup!”

TL: “Oh yes.”

[My mother]: “Your dad loves to say ‘Don’t be a knucklehead’ to you and your sister!”

Interviewer: Oh yes! You also say “You can’t teach stupid” a lot.

TL: “Mmm.” [This is him agreeing]

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION:

Because of my dad’s nature, it ended up with my mother and I leading the conversation from things that we remember my dad saying. While my dad might forget the things he says (which I personally feel that it’s common for people to forget the habitual phrases and words they use), my family and I remember it quite well. My dad loves to use proverbs or phrases that teach a lesson of some sort. After the interview, I asked my father where he learned these from and he stated it was a mix of his dad, TV, and the people he grew up playing sports around in NYC. What’s even more interesting is that I find myself using one of his phrases, “you can’t teach stupid” myself when giving advice to my friends. It’s incredibly interesting how common phrases and things we hear in our environments and families become a part of our subconscious.

Wig Snatching

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minneapolis
Performance Date: April 21, 2019
Primary Language: English

In LGBT+ communities saying someone or something “snatched your wig” means you’re shocked by whatever happened. It comes from a drag performances where sometimes in more dramatic moments drag queens will literally take off another queen’s wig. Sometimes there can be another wig under the wig, making the whole event entirely premeditated spectacle, but usually the queen whose wig is pulled isn’t prepared and they have their actual hair revealed by the wig snatch.

This particular lingo speaks to the in-grouping found in LGBT+ communities. It’s a phrase referring to a specific act in a genre of show specifically produced, performed, and attended by a mostly LGBT+ folk group. The internet has spread the phrase around to become more mainstream but the nature of its origins shows how insular the environment it came about in was. The exact syntax is also flexible, with all sorts of small variations from “My wig? Snatched!” to sometimes just “Wig,” which makes sense given the LGBT+ communities general position as pioneers of evolving “archaic” language such as gendered pronouns.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Nationality: Asian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Marino, California
Performance Date: February 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

My informant started hearing this saying two years ago during his junior year of high school.  People were saying it everywhere, and he couldn’t help but say it too.  “Don’t worry about it” became part of his more used expressions.  Eventually, all of his friends started saying it too.  It became one of the phrases that they would know when to use.  They used it so frequently that they would answer any question or comment with “don’t worry about it.”
He uses the saying when, obviously, he doesn’t want someone to worry about something.  He replaced “it’s alright,” along with other phrases, with “don’t worry about it.”  He started saying it even when it didn’t really apply.  If a person asked him a question and he didn’t feel like answering, he would just reply with “don’t worry about it.”
He does not know what he would do without this saying.  He has begun to rely on it so much because it allows him to answer even when he doesn’t know what to say.  It’s also become special to him because it’s pretty much an inside joke between him and his friends.  “Don’t worry about it” is accepted as an appropriate way of responding his friends, but not so much with others.
I think that this phrase is just a way of avoiding things.  Some usages of it is fine, but when someone answers back with “don’t worry about it” when there should be an actual answer, I think that the person is just trying to avoid questions.  I think that my informant and his friends shouldn’t rely on this saying when they’re having conversations with other people.  Replying with “don’t worry about it” after every few questions can become quite frustrating, especially when you need answers.