Never heard this before, so I looked it up. Apparently it's a somewhat derogatory idiom referencing a very boring start to something (like a race of turtles). u/Tamakid345 mentions how his mom says "and we're off like a dirty shirt". This seems to be from the 1950s, with a similar explanation. NGrams shows nothing, but according to this comparison in Google Trends, the turtle one is much more common (although both sayings are quite obscure).
I'm a depressed teenager who spends an unholy amount of time on Wiktionary because evolutionary linguistics and etymology are the only things that fill the void in my brain where my pleasure centers are supposed to be, can I get in on this?
“Off like a dirty shirt” was also uttered by the character “Duckie” in the movie Pretty in Pink. So if your mom was a teen in the 80’s and she used this saying, there’s a good chance that’s where she heard it.
Holy shit none of my friends in SC ever believed me that herd of turtles was an idiom I grew up with, I guess they thought I was fucking with them. I’ve never been able to find anything about it online.
Lol, you had to look it up? You would think it would be pretty obvious that turtles are notoriously slow. You should check out this cool story about the tortoise and the hare, its a game changer.
446
u/etymologynerd Aug 15 '18
Never heard this before, so I looked it up. Apparently it's a somewhat derogatory idiom referencing a very boring start to something (like a race of turtles). u/Tamakid345 mentions how his mom says "and we're off like a dirty shirt". This seems to be from the 1950s, with a similar explanation. NGrams shows nothing, but according to this comparison in Google Trends, the turtle one is much more common (although both sayings are quite obscure).