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"There's no flies on her"

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Mountain Goat
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02 Dec 2021, 8:13 pm

Joe90 wrote:
Wow this is an old thread.


Is not that old. Is this centuary.


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katzhutte
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02 Dec 2021, 8:13 pm

I always thought it meant you have a quick mind and metaphorical flies don't have time to land on it i.e quick to understand things , not easily fooled



Mountain Goat
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02 Dec 2021, 8:15 pm

Flies do think fast, so is that why flies represent quick thinking? She thinks faster then flies do?


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cyberdad
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02 Dec 2021, 8:17 pm

Never heard of it? must be a regional AmerIcan thing



naturalplastic
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02 Dec 2021, 8:21 pm

katzhutte wrote:
I always thought it meant you have a quick mind and metaphorical flies don't have time to land on it i.e quick to understand things , not easily fooled


Okay...then that example someone used of the lady "getting on the phone to make a bid" (ie acting fast) would make sense. You move so fast that flies wouldnt mistake you for...roadkill.. and land on you...Lol!.



katzhutte
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02 Dec 2021, 8:27 pm

Mountain Goat wrote:
Flies do think fast, so is that why flies represent quick thinking? She thinks faster then flies do?


I just googled it and found this

Quote:
'In the 19th century, to say that "there are no flies on him" of somebody meant that the person was alert and active, probably by allusion to cattle that move around enough to deny flies a landing place.'


this

Quote:
One is wide awake; there is nothing slow or dull about one. For example, She may be new to this field, but there are no flies on her. This slangy expression, which alludes to flies settling on a sluggish animal, was being used in Australia in the 1840s but did not appear in America until the last decades of the 1800s.


and this

Quote:
Definition of no flies on
chiefly British, informal
—used to describe someone as quick to understand things and not easily fooled