Attention and Redundancy

Posted by TheFallen on March 20, 2002

In Reply to: Attracting attention posted by ESC on March 20, 2002

: A friend passed this along. It's colorful but I have no idea how it came to be: "He will stand out like a dime in a goat's a**."

: A related phrase referring to unwanted attention, feeling "out of place": "I felt like a hog in Sunday school."

Regarding conspicuousness, the most common idiom here remains "to stand out like a sore thumb", which I am guessing has a near literal provenance from some kind of carpentry injury.

As for redundancy, there's "third wheel", and a frequently used yet obscene British simile which I'll only reproduce in part form here: "...like a spare pr*** at a wedding".

• Attention and Redundancy ESC 03/20/02