Posted on 01/08/2019 3:57:41 AM PST by sodpoodle
Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really! The other day a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said what the heck is a Jalopy? OMG (new phrase!) he never heard of the word jalopy!! She knew she was old but not that old…
Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle..
About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included “Don’t touch that dial,” “Carbon copy,” “You sound like a broken record” and “Hung out to dry.” Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We’d put on our best bib and tucker to straighten up and fly right.
Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!
We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!
Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers.
Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.
We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! or This is a fine kettle of fish! We discover that the words we grew up with,- the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.
Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re gone. Where have all those phrases gone?
Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It’s your nickel. Don’t forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I’ll see you in the funny papers. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills.
This can be disturbing stuff ! We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging.
See ya later, alligator, after a while crocodile!
Uuugggghh?!?
Whippersnapper (not whipersnaper) is a young and inexperienced person considered to be presumptuous or overconfident.
“I know her better than you do, you young whippersnapper!”
If the f-word disappeared, a lot of people would lose 90% of their working vocabulary and most modern ‘comedians’ would be out of work.
Do you remember James Coburn and In Like Flint? Loved it.
Sadly gone is “it’s a free country.”
I recently suggested that my 19 year old “Xerox” something. She had no clue what I meant.
Reminds me: in school we were handed mimeograph copies. At least one of my teachers called such a copy a “ditto.”
Great Balls of Fire!
Crazier than a bag of hammers!
Hornier than a 10 peckered owl!
Hasn’t got a full deck !
Ready Kilowatt!
No conceit in her family, she has it all.
Holy Be Jassus!
I’m headed!
If you've never seen the Bruce Willis movie "Hudson Hawk", you need to ... James Coburn does a great caricature of his Derek Flint character.
Also a dike was something the little boy put his finger in to keep the sea from flooding Holland.
No Lollygagging!
One of the funniest bits in Skyrim.
I don’t see “the other hand” as your example is one of inference, depending on ones state of mind, where the vulgarity I refer to is blatant and leaves nothing to infer.
But I agree there was a lot of sexual innuendo used that I didn’t understand as a youngster. Today’s youngsters are much better versed in everything sexual.
I’m 60 and the vast majority of those words were old geezer words to me. I read and sometimes heard them but never actually used any of them outside of sarcasam.
“One of the funniest bits in Skyrim.”
Never played it.
looks like you covered the whole kit and kaboodle
“Pull my finger”...
Not ‘In like Flynn’, but ‘In like Flintstone’!
I understood it that younger coach/stage/buggy drivers would compensate for lack of experience by overusing the whip on the team - thus young ‘whip’er’snap’per
I have no factual information to back this up.
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