Posted on 05/28/2018 12:24:30 PM PDT by sodpoodle
Mergatroyd! Do you remember that word? Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Mergatroyd? ‘Heavens to Mergatroyd’!
The other day a not so elderly (I say 75) lady said something to her grandson about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said "What the heck is a Jalopy?"
OMG! 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 ducktail; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers . . . AND DON'T FORGET . . . Saddle Stitched Pants.
"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 great phrases gone? (My Favorite) "Let's all go to the beach Saturday".
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.’ ‘Wake up and smell the roses’.
It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions ‘than Carter has liver pills’. This can be disturbing stuff! (“Carter's Little Liver Pills" are gone too!)
We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable 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.
Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth?
See ya later, alligator! Okey Dokey!
WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FABULOUS 50'S. NO ONE WILL EVER HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY AGAIN. WE WERE GIVEN ONE OF OUR MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS BACK THEN: - OUR MEMORIES – ALAS, I SEEM TO BE LOSING MINE A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME.
I like coffeepot. I think I got that from Larry McMurtry.
Anything beginning with a J came in right handy.
My grandfather is fond of saying: “I don’t know whether to sh-t and go blind or close one eye and fart”.
At high school games we always had the yell, “TWO BITS, FOUR BITS, SIX BITS A DOLLAR, EVERYONE FROM (our school name) STAND UP AND HOLLER.
The one that gets me is bringing out the word yahoo. This had to come from someone not knowing the origin of the word. The origin was yeyhoo, from reversing the two words we often used....Hey You.
I’m 62. I said okey dokey to my millenial boss and got a quizzical stare.
Young people don’t know who I’m referencing when I tell them I really love John, Paul, George, and Ringo. That one hurts!
We moved to WV from OH. Everything with four wheels down here is a buggy. Shopping cart - buggy. ATV - buggy.
Cars are the exception. They’re vehicles.
“Don’t make a federal case out of it!”
(Because back then, federal cases were rare.)
Both my daughters were able to impress their high school teachers by catching Python references and quoting back to them. There classmates thought at first it was a Japanese thing since their mom is from there.
I did my best to raise them right on Looney Tunes, Python, Carol Burnett, etc...
Both are now in college and share youtube videos with their friends creating a whole new generation of pealing laughter upon the “new” discoveries.
The “dollars” at that time was a piece of metal with eight breakoffable parts....these are the bits...2 of them are a quarter of the dollar...hence the term...two bits...two bits equals 25 cents.
2094...and still can't make it as POTUS
“I don’t know what world you live in, but 75 is elderly. Everywhere.”
.
... and for the two of you ... “23 skidoo”! Whilst whistling “Mairzy Doats”!
ducking now ...
You know this thread is a real doozy! (Duisenberg - a real good jalopy!)
You mean, Monty Python isn’t dead?
It hasn’t run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible?
:-)
Shave and haircut, for something that goes into a horses mouth? Wanna give that another shot?
You got it.
And this is probably the only place you will hear that word used. Of course NOTHING costs two bits any more.
Pieces of Eight, wiseacre...
Spanish Milled Dollars, Eight Reales silver pieces... they were often cut up into eighths... and eighth was “one bit”. This verbiage, but not the actual cutting, was transferred over to the US dollar...
So... ‘shave and a haircut, two bits’... means that it cost one quarter. Back when a dollar was really something.
Now... see if you can figure out where the expression “my two cents worth” comes from....
close. It was “After while, crocodile”
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