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!
Incorrect. The word "craic" is Irish Gaelic for "yak" or "blabber". The state of Georgia was settled by many Irish and Scots-Irish Gaelic speakers. A craic-er was a big talker or a braggart, or someone who yakked too much, or talked idly.
Craic is still used as a slang term by English-speaking Irish people. Wanting to ingratiate himself with Irish college students whom he was about to address in 2013, Barack Obama walked onstage and asked them, "What's the craic?" ...the way we would say, "What's the talk around campus?"
Unless those new immigrants are from Western Europe or Japan, they’ll probably be MORE familiar with older technology, at least more than our own Millenials and Z Generation.
I just retired in April after teaching at a university for 20 years (after my Air Force career). While you and I still say “dialed the wrong number,” “hung up the phone,” “taped the show,” “whipped into shape,” “wiretapped...” and etc., the youngers don’t. It won’t be long before we get more and more puzzled looks from the young. Also, such phrases actually does more to identify us as old timers!
:)
I’m in SC and have some stuff that is prime jalopy.
Because it requires much less math!
I enjoy some of their pictures and discussions. However, I drive a 15-passenger van.
Most people today couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
ROFL
“LIKE”
That may all be true; and that’s fine. But when blacks call a white guy a cracker, they’re alluding back to slavery days when Massa’s overseer drove their ancestors to work harder. They’re certainly not invoking anything Irish Gaelic.
I agree; however, your post said they "coined" the term, and I pointed out that they did not -- apparently they "culturally appropriated" it for their own use! :-)
As a point of interest along those lines, the historian Arthur Herman, who wrote How the Scots Invented the Modern World, researched the term "redneck" and found that its origins dated to the early 1800s in the south, when the Scots and Scots-Irish settlers flooded in. Their Presbyterian pastors wore a red ribbon around their collars, to distinguish themselves from the Episcopal and Catholic priests' collars, which had a white insert. So the term was originally a slur against the newcomers from Scotland. And we Southerners all know how the meaning spread outward, upward and downward.
When Irish Gaelics used a word originating in their ancient language it meant whatever they intended. When the slaves of yore, or blacks nowadays call some white guy a “cracker” they are referring to the sound made by the lash on the end of a whip when it’s quickly flipped in a certain way. No deep etymology involved.
Sparkin’
Going steady.
Over the moon.
French Kiss
Routing
Necking
Hickie
Film at 11:00.
“A whip-snapper was a seventeenth-century term for a young man with nothing better to do than to hang about idly snapping a whip. Whippersnapper is one of those rare terms that has a somewhat literal origin. Today, the term is usually used in an archaic sense or as a slightly humorous term.”
I had to look that one up, my dad used the term to refer to boys/young men that overstepped their boundaries, acting as though they knew everything. Older people saying someone was just a whippersnapper in the 1960s was a way of telling them they were too young or inexperienced to butt in.
Country sayings from my parents; my dad was a cowboy, my mother from farm in Missouri:
If wishes were horses beggars would ride.
Not yet dry behind the ears.
Cat fur to make kitten britches- that’s what fer.
Why you young whippersnapper!
Kids should be seen and not heard.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Cowsmarts-You are supposed to be smarter than a cow. (this one was in response to not being able to manage a cow- literally being outsmarted by a cow)
No need to go around the bush (no long winded stories or explanations needed- spit it out)
Birds of a feather flock together (said to keep us from hanging out with fun kids that were often in trouble)
Two of a kind, peas in a pod.
No time for that we have corn to shuck (get busy, even when there was no corn to shuck there was a lot to do)
Driving ducks to muddy water (leading a bad life-going the wrong direction)
Burning daylight (slow getting around in the morning and I heard that from old cowboys long before John Wayne said it in a movie)
You did that like an old widow woman (slow, being ungraceful not sure of the connection there)
Wise words - when folks loved live chat;)
I had no idea this thread would have so many responses.
God bless T8
Mom’s reply to our question, what’s for dessert?
“Wind pudding and air sauce.”
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