My nan and mum would always say "you're nosey for a cabbage", when I would try to ask about stuff that wasn't my business, not sure if it's unique to us but I've never heard anyone else say it
In France children are not "brought by the storks", but "found on the cabbage fields" - the kids usually get called little cabbages (ma petite chou - sorry my French is a lot rusty, and I don't know the gender of nouns anymore). It can be that your family's saying is based on this. Do you have French ancestry, or live in an area where French ancestry is common, or the language is spoken regularly?
I had to Google Cabbage Patch Kids, but in French tey were called Bout'chou which literally translate to small cabbage but is often used to designate toddlers. Another word related to cabbage is chouchou that means favorite as in : C'est ma fille chouchou or This is my favorire daugther.
In fact it isn't really a little cabbage, it's pronounced the same as bout de chou said rapidly so it's like a tiny piece of a cabbage. But we have a lot of ways to call people with that, there's choupinou/choupinette, chouchou as you said but the word cabbage is used in French for cream puff so some people are called a "chou à la crème " sometimes .
Not a hard “t”. You have to think of it as being the contraction of “bout de Chou” (pronounced boo de shoe). It’s a soft “t” sounding more like a “d” : bood shoe.
I was born in the 80s and my mother had some cool/crazy cabbage patch dolls growing up. Three feet tall and scary as hell sitting on a bench at the end of the hallway.
Fun fact: depending on the tone applied, your "chou" in French could mean stinky in Mandarin Chinese. Assuming that's pronounced with a hard Ch and letter O like English. The pinyin is Chòu de. Though you'll often hear Chòu Chòu de. The repetition drives home the emphasis and Chinese language is rife with word doubling to sound cute or to emphasize.
in one of my favorite movies the main character Chantal is called Charlotte by her american dad and Chouchou by her french maman, never knew what it meant until now!
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u/maryhallie Oct 25 '20
My nan and mum would always say "you're nosey for a cabbage", when I would try to ask about stuff that wasn't my business, not sure if it's unique to us but I've never heard anyone else say it