Posted on 05/05/2016 5:03:45 AM PDT by harpygoddess
"Hang up the phone." comes from one specific kind of land-line phone that had a kind of hook you'd hang the handset from when you were done. Doing so would pull down the hook that was connected to a switch inside the phone that would disconnect the line.
And lots of nautical stuff:
Groggy - In 1740, British Admiral Vernon (whose nickname was "Old Grogram" for the cloak of grogram which he wore) ordered that the sailors' daily ration of rum be diluted with water. The men called the mixture "grog". A sailor who drank too much grog was "groggy".
Leeway - The weather side of a ship is the side from which the wind is blowing. The Lee side is the side of the ship sheltered from the wind. A lee shore is a shore that is downwind of a ship. If a ship does not have enough "leeway" it is in danger of being driven onto the shore.
Pipe Down - Means stop talking and be quiet. The Pipe Down was the last signal from the Bosun's pipe each day which meant "lights out" and "silence".
Slush Fund - A slushy slurry of fat was obtained by boiling or scraping the empty salted meat storage barrels. This stuff called "slush" was often sold ashore by the ship's cook for the benefit of himself or the crew. The money so derived became known as a slush fund.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
Add to that “rode hard and put up wet”. Which is very bad for the horse. Gotta walk them to cool down.
Rule of thumb.
I’ve read a book where the character took the safety off a Glock.
NOBODY knows what that means!
Drop a dime, or nickel.
You know, I just realized since English was my third language under the age of 7, that I open the lignts instead of turning them on.
Funny, when I started working as a call center agent in a CATV company we had people calling and talking about ants on their screens. I thought they were talking about insects. Then it dawned on me that all of the Spanish speakers were from Central America. they had never seen “snow.” They referred to the static screen as ants crawling all over the screen. We had referred to it as snow in New England.
My grandparents spoke about the stores that they “traded” with.
there was no trade, but that was the term they used. I occasionally use it.
I caught myself saying that the other day.
Here's another one: "Boardinghouse reach", when you rudely reach across someone at the table to get the butter or salt instead of asking "Will you please pass me the (x)." I recently asked a young dinner companion to "Excuse my boardinghouse reach," and not only did I have to explain what it meant, but also what a boardinghouse was.
That was the dirtiest language I ever heard anyone say until I was in high school. My uncle said it to my grandmother when she showed him her old wringer washer. Then she giggled, which was the real scandal!
Get your wires crossed.
1. Of oneself, to be or become confused, mistaken, or mentally disordered (about something). An allusion to telephone lines being wrongly connected and thus disrupting calls.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/get+your+wires+crossed
My mom died several years ago at 96. She would talk about the ice truck, and how the guy knew the right size of block for every house. Except at their house the kids would gather, and he always had to chip a bit more to get it the right size. (Leaving lots of cold ice chips for the kids to grab!).
Her favorite was the “cheny” man - the rag man, as he still used a mule to tow his cart as he made the rounds to gather rags, tin foil, etc. She would save every scrap of tin foil and get some from the neighbors too. She had a wad the size of a basketball finally and went to sell it to the rag man.
“He only offered me a penny for it! I told him he can keep his penny as I would rather have this huge ball that I had made!”
My dad would get up early in the morning and suck the cream off of the bottle of milk that would rise to the top (hmm - the “cream of the crop”). His mom would get so mad at him!
I’m not sure of the process, but I think it was a mimeograph machine that our teacher used back in 1970 or so. Us kids would write a poem, or a cartoon, or a joke or something. The teacher would cut them out and put them on one or two 8 -1/2 by 11 sheets of paper and run them off and make 32 copies or whatever. Everything was in a light blue ink. “Mrs. Jones 5th Grade Newspaper”. I still have a box with some that my mom saved for me.
It's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!When I first heard someone say that, I laughed of course but was ignorant about the phrase's origin and meaning.
Years later, a retired AF friend who was a B-17 gunner (and a pretty good shot with a rifle) explained it to me as best he could. There is some doubt in my mind that such a situation could occur, even in these days of "climate change."
Here goes:
Cannon on naval ships fired iron cannon-balls. They were stacked on deck in a sort of pyramid, with a 4x4 square at the bottom, a 3x3 on the next level, then 2x2 and at the top a single ball so you had a total of 30.
To keep the bottom layer (which holds all the weight of the upper layers) from being pushed out and roll around the deck, these ships had a brass plate installed in the deck beside each cannon to hold the pyramid. The brass plate, called a "monkey," had scalloped indentations the proper distance apart to hold the first layer of 16 balls.
Once the initial layer of 16 was in place on the monkey, 9 balls were added in the next layer,, then four and finally the single ball on top .
Now here is where this seafaring saga runs aground, or into a reef.
It was known to the ancients that brass is different from iron. The two metals have different hardness, different mass, and different rates of thermal expansion. Precise measurements couldn't be made on those characteristics in the age of pirates and armadas and sword fights of the Douglas Fairbanks variety, of course, but why spoil a good story?
Presumably, when the temperature drops to some unfathomable below-freezing point, the brass monkey, which expands and shrinks with temperature at a slightly faster rate than iron, becomes mismatched to the cannon balls it supports and you then have thirty cannon balls on the loose. (This can be dismissed as an extremely unlikely event.)
So, to answer Ed McMahon's frequent question to Johnny (" . . and how cold was it?") it might be more appropriate to say something that people in the 21st Century might relate to, like "This guy's Tesla started shivering" or "My Apple watch told me to put on another jacket and a wool scarf, plus another pair of socks to keep my toes from freezing."
It used a volatile fluid that left an imprint on coated paper that came out light blue--and stunk. The paper tended to curl, too.
These days, I'm sure it would be banned as harmful to children.
Maybe it was and that explains everything.
“Maybe it was and that explains everything.”
HEY!
(Thanks - and yes, it DID stink!)
“Maybe it was and that explains everything.”
HEY!
(Thanks - and yes, it DID stink!)
Thanks Sunken Civ for bringing back these memories.
PJT: I don’t know about Hollerith cards, but In the 1960s I was working for a Congressman. I remember using Punch Cards to send out multiple identical messages. I would type in the address, then press a button and the typewriter would run through the punched card like it was a Player Piano (another old one), after which we folded letter and mailed it. Around the same time I worked for a researcher and produced charts and graphs using a Leroy Lettering Set. I was going through my mothers old boxes from the 1920s and found her Dance Cards, listing people she promised to dance with those nights.
XEHRoa - we had an old hand crank Victrola and listed to my mother’s Caruso records (78s).
Slip18 - When I was a young child we had an 8 person Party Line, then 4 people, 2 people, and finally our own personal phone line.
Lizaretta - About 15 years ago an assistant to our black Mayor lost his $100,000+ a year job because he used the word “niggardly” referring to a stingy person.
firebrand - many memories from WW2, collecting foil from gum wrappers and cigarette pack liners, stomping tin cans for scrap drives, delivering fat to the butcher for nitroglycerine, and having a large Victory Garden.
Still is. I get mine from the milkman every Monday.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.