Dragged through the pea patch

Posted by James Briggs on October 09, 2001

In Reply to: Dragged through the pea patch posted by ESC on October 09, 2001

: : I told a friend of mine that I thought her girlfriend looked as though she had been 'dragged through the peapatch'. Can anyone tell me where I got that from?

: Here a guess. There's an expression about someone looking like he has "been dragged through hell backwards." Substituting "pea patch" for "hell" is just cleaning up the phrase. It's sounds southern to me.

It's 'a hedge backwards' in the UK

• Another "pea patch" phrase R. Berg 10/09/01