Visiting my grandparents recently, I was struck by a phrase my grandmother said frequently: \u201cgo tell that to your Dutch uncle\u201d.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never heard this before, and neither my grandfather or mother use the phrase or could tell me where it was from. A quick search doesn\u2019t reveal anything of its origins. My grandmother used it jokingly when she thought someone was saying something fanciful or that she didn\u2019t believe. I got the impression that the \u201cDutch uncle\u201d was someone fictional, who would believe the stories you would tell.<\/p>\n
A \u201cDutch uncle\u201d is referenced here<\/a> as \u201ca term for a person who issues frank, harsh, and severe comments and criticism to educate, encourage, or admonish someone\u201d, whereas here<\/a> it is \u201ca person who bluntly and sternly lectures or scolds someone, often with benevolent intent\u201d. Perhaps my grandmother was using it more in the sense that the Dutch uncle was someone who would punish the story-teller for their lies.<\/p>\n My grandmother is in her eighties and from the West Country in England. Perhaps this is a regional idiom? <\/p>\n Can anyone shed any light on this strange phrase?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Visiting my grandparents recently, I was struck by a phrase my grandmother said frequently: \u201cgo tell that to your Dutch uncle\u201d. I\u2019d never heard this before, and neither my grandfather or mother use the phrase or could tell me where it was from. A quick search doesn\u2019t reveal anything of its origins. My grandmother used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,52,44],"tags":[676,3,52,124],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-idioms","category-words","tag-dutch-uncle","tag-english","tag-idioms","tag-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}