Posted on 02/01/2019 9:26:57 PM PST by vannrox
Lost Words from our childhood:
Mergatroyd!…
Do you remember that word? Would you believe the 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 son about driving a Jalopy; and he looked at her quizzically and said “What the heck is a Jalopy?” 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 great 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. 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! Oki-doki
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: LIVING IN THE PEACEFUL AND COMFORTABLE TIMES, CREATED FOR US BY THE “GREATEST GENERATION!”
No, no, no. It’s 23 Skidoo. This is my favorite origin story for the phrase...
“23-skidoo came from an expression that construction workers used while building the Flatiron Building on 23rd Street in N.Y.C. 23rd Street is one of the wider streets in New York that is like an uninterrupted wind-tunnel between the East and Hudson Rivers.
Frequently, when one is walking north or south on the avenues and comes to such an intersection, they can experience a sudden blast of wind as soon as they pass the wall of a corner building.
Apparently, when the workers sat on the sidewalk to eat their lunches, they would watch women’s skirts blow up from the sudden gusts.”
I’ll say she does!
Bee’s knees
Jitney
Just as Teddy Roosevelt said...NO HYPHENATED AMERICANS! :-)
Moley is actually from Ancient Greece ( moley referred to garlic, BTW ) and IIRC comes from the works of Homer.
There are other versions, such as : HOLY JUMPING CATS (which I still use).
It’s a THUG/ghetto/RAP thing and was NEVER done/said, by blacks, in most of the 20th century.
Then there are : "ye gods and little fishes", "Jimminy Christmas" which is an alternative to saying (Jesus Christ ), and quite a few more never heard today terms/words.
Personally, I also like "JUMPING JEHOSHAPHAT" as an exclamation. Jehoshaphat was an ancient Kind of Judah.
Perhaps the use of "jalopy" depends on where once was born & raised.
YIKES!
“Ain’t that the berries!” and similar ‘berries’ phrases came from the 1920s.
How about the original college cheer? Ski-U-Mah!
Catty-corner means: at right angle to each other.
Caddywompuss means: messed-up, crooked, at an angle.
Amen to that!
Or kittycorner
You don’t say!
You could’a knocked me over with a feather!
I was standin’ there with my kneecaps halfway up my legs!
He was grinnin’ like a cat eatin’ paste! Or maybe like a mule eatin’ saw briars.
The "23" in the term, does indeed come from 23rd Street; however, my gran told me that at one time there were "undersireables" ( her word...but meaning the worst sorts ) that would hang around the Flatiron building, the cops would tell them ( not nicely! ) to "MOVE ALONG". This then became a slang term, for them, which they would say when they saw cops approaching, which then spread to others, meaning lets get out of here.
"SKIDDOO", alone, actually means : "LEAVE QUICKLY!" :-)
I love the English language and have many books that deal with it, euphemisms, idioms, and such. A really cute book to uses as reference/to read just for fun is one from the LET'S BRING BACK series, titled :THE LOST LANGUAGE EDITION, by Lesley M.M. Blume.
It's how I was raised and still abide by.
And I proud of my heritage? Yes, I am, but I am an AMERICAN; nothing else!
Oh...and race doesn't matter at all to me; it's the person!
That's how I was raised, and I raised my own kids the same way. It's the American way!
HL Mencken wrote some great books about the language.
And my grand is being raised that way too. :-)
A "living language" is NOT one that decreases...it's one that broadens.
“Perhaps the use of “jalopy” depends on where once was born & raised.”
Could be. I grew up around a whole mess of older folks.
I wonder if anyone remembers the Rumble seat. They were gone by the time I made the scene but I remember the older folks talking about them.
Millenials and younger probably think it’s the stool boxers sit on between rounds.
“I wonder if anyone remembers the Rumble seat.”
I’ve ridden in a rumble seat-——great fun.
.
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