I heard the Clash song ‘Should I stay or Should I Go?’ song on the radio this morning. I was struck by the line, “Should I cool it or should I blow”. Of course, I know that blow in this case means ‘leave’ but I don’t think I’ve ever used it in that way myself. It seems kind of anachronistic, I guess (even for '82).
Do you, or have you ever, used this slang?
I’ve heard, and perhaps used jokingly, “let’s blow this joint” to mean “leave.” But not the intransitive version.
Lyrics tend not to follow the paradigm of typical grammar in my experience.
Right, I was speaking more generally.
I’d understand what was meant if someone said that to me, but I have never said that (I have “blown off” a lot of things, though).
Used in the being gone sense makes me think of 1930s gangsters. Sounds old-fashioned.
Jocularly, “Let’s blow this pop stand.”
Considering that Billy Mack knows just exactly what the facts is, I agree that lyrics are not a good source of grammatical riles.
I dig that line (“Should I cool it or should I blow?”) because in addition to meaning “should I stay or should I go?”, it also implies “should I keep my shit together (stay calm) or should I act impulsively (blow up)”?.
'82 was just a bit after college for me. The phrase sounds perfectly current with those times to me. Not mainstream usage, but certainly common slang. I blew a lot of joints and pop stands in the few years both prior and subsequent. “Let’s blow!” launched a lot of minor road trips.
“Let’s make like the wind and blow”=let’s leave. You can also blow into town. But if you blew town, you left.
AIUI those phrases drive foreign speakers crazy. Blow up=get angry, explode. Blow out=fail, like a tire; complete trouncing in sports. Blow over=resolve, get better. Blow off=release (blow off steam) or disregard. Etc.
Yup, those are called “phrasal verbs,” and they are much more difficult for English language learners to master than seemingly more advanced words that mean the same thing. A lot of my students found them fun, though.
Yup – we used “Let’s blow this pop stand / popsicle stand” often when we were kids, decades ago, as slang for “let’s go.”
I’ve said “let’s blow”, probably not that recently but somewhat. Hell, I’ve said “let’s book” maybe as often and who says that?
I still say “drat” sometimes, which dates to the 19th century, but people still get the skinny.
I haven’t heard that for quite some time, however, I used to say it regularly.
From the same time period: punting and ralphing. “Let’s go” was often “let’s beat feet”. And then there’s the iconic Valley-speak of “grody”, “gag me with a spoon”, and “totally tubular, man”.
We used to say, “let’s blow this popsicle joint”, so there’s another variation for you.
Some of these are hard to remember. Yikes.
I remember this from the 60s and 70s. Not commonly said, but everybody understood it.
Those were was iconic in the sense that it was good parody. I don’t think I ever heard any of those used non-ironically.
I have heard the first two used unironically. I still, occasionally, say that something is “grody”.
I never understood what, if anything, “tubular” was supposed to mean.
Doesn’t it just mean “really cool”? That’s how I’ve always understood, though I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered it in the wild. “Totally tubular, dude!” My guess is that it is supposed to refer to the “tube” of a really cool surfing wave, perhaps? At least that’s how I’ve always interpreted it.
I was working in L.A. during the Valley Girl time period. I had long time friends out there with a teenage daughter I has seen grow up since the age of 2. She had a pretty good handle on the situation. So according to my expert, most of these words and phrases passed through pretty quickly. Suddenly everybody at school would be describing things as “grody”, for a week, and next week it would be something else. Valley-speak wasn’t so much about the vocabulary as it wasabouttiming, or inflection?, or attitude.