A very thin man, or one attenuated by sickness:—'You could blow him off your hand.'
A poor fellow complains of the little bit of meat he got for his dinner:—'It was no more than a daisy in a bull's mouth!' Another says of his dinner
when it was in his stomach:—'It was no more than a midge in the Glen of the Downs.'
Exhorting a messenger to be quick:—'Don't be there till you're back again.' Another way:—'Now run as quick as you can, and if you fall don't wait to get up.' Warning a person to be expeditious in any work you put him to:—'Now don't let grass grow under your feet.' Barney urging on the ass to go quickly:—'Come Bobby, don't let grass grow under your feet.' ('Knocknagow.')
If a person is secretly very willing to go to a place—as a lover to the house of the girl's parents:—'You could lead him there with a halter of snow.'
'Is this razor sharp?' 'Sharp!—why 'twould shave a mouse asleep.'
A lazy fellow, fond of sitting at the fire, has the A B C on his shins, i.e. they are blotched with the heat.
Of an inveterate talker:—That man would talk the teeth out of a saw.
A young fellow gets a great fright:—'It frightened him out of a year's growth.'
When Nancy saw the master so angry she was frightened out of her wits: or frightened out of her seven senses. When I saw the horse ride over him I was frightened out of my life.