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!
Yeah. *sigh*
That and a nickle will get you a subway ride.
Then the dopes get old, the complainers of yesteryear die off, and the new elders (i.e., old dopes) start the whining process all over with the new troop of dopes.
Baby boomers gave way to Gen X which gave way to Millenials. This is nothing new, and to act like it is evinces a level of arrogance that befits a Democrat.
Where I get concerned is when the youngins don't recall classic movie lines.
Bats in the bell free. LMAO!
Let’s not be over-dramatic, though. For some words and terms, yes, but for others, they’re gone because technology changed.
We no longer have pay phones everywhere, nor single black AT&T phones with rotary dials in the house. We don’t have many record players, either. Small, heavy tubed TVs with rotary dials are gone, too.
That’s just the way it is.
Also, some terms come from generational peer groups and are not meant to be permanent. Groovy, cool, far-out and happening where terms of my generation and have mostly gone away.
I’ll bet there were phrases and words from George Washington’s time that aren’t used any longer. Some old guys probably lamented the fact in the 1820s and blamed all the new immigrants from Ireland!
This thread is cool as a moose.
Gnarly dude.
Chew the fat.
Have a cup of Joe.
Gimme the rundown.
Come again?
Yer pullin my leg.
Say it ain’t so.
Well, I declare.
Did she blow the coop?
Like a bat out of hell.
Yes, that's what first came to my mind, too. Usually said in response to someone who was "offended" about something you had said or done.
Next lost work I’m waiting for is “Democrat”. Party will soon no longer exist as we know it, gone like the Whigs......
“Looks like the cat’s out of the bag.”
“The whole nine yards”
“It’s in the bag”
Here’s one that is becoming rarer by the day; “ Wait ‘til your father gets home!”
When I was a kid, whenever us kids were upset my mom would say, “don’t make a federal case out of it” . This is so out dated, who knew everything would become a federal case now.
Many of those “obsolete” expressions are still in use. We still use expressions from hundreds of years ago that have lost their original meaning.
That’s why you are a whippersnapper. 8>)
I habn’t heard the phrase “real McCoy” in that context. It goes way back before Prohibition. The origin is debated, as I recall.
I use “Holy moley!” all the time. There’s a Mexican food chain in SoCal called Holé Molé. Maybe it will make a comeback!
Whipersnaper was a smart ass.
It's interesting that it's the swear words that remain.
I agree about technology-based words, but they do linger. We still say "dialed the wrong number," "hung up the phone," "taped the show," "whipped into shape," "wiretapped..." to evoke general actions rather than actual technologies used.
But even those phrases were common across the culture. The person one called also had a phone to hang up to close the connection, or a buggy with a horse that was whipped. Our culture passed down the phrases, if not the technology. But what about the migrants from other countries where the hanging phone was not prevalent, or horse-drawn carriages, or VCRs? Those phrases mean nothing to them, and they are not likely to adopt them nor pass them down.
-PJ
Tight wad
Flew the coop
Hoodwinked
The birds and bees.
In the family way.
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