I understand this expression means “out of it”, or “square”, from the way you can up the thumb and forefinger of one hand to make an “L” and the other hand to make a “7”, forming a rough square. My first thought on learning of this was that, if you’re actually going to go through the physical gyrations to make this gesture, it’s a lot of effort to go through to just to cast aspersions on someone’s lack of hipness. My second thought was that the verbal expression must have died out in the 1950’s, but James Lileks, who was too young to have experienced the 1950’s uses the term in his latest Bleat.
So what I’d like to know is, did you ever use or see the hand gesture, or use the verbal expression? And during what decade?
I first heard of it in the 80’s, as something used in the 50’s. I did not hear it when I was a kid in the 50’s. It strikes me as contrived, and it doesn’t surprise me it wasn’t used much.
I never heard “square” in the L7 format. In MY day, you drew an invisible square, starting at the center of the top of the square, and rounding the corners to end up at the center of the bottom of the square. It was already outdated in the early 60s.
See and for some reason i thought this would have somethign to do with the all female punk band L7 of the “smell the magic” and “hungry for stink” fame.
Circa 1965, and a standard on oldies stations. But that was the only place I ever heard the phrase, and I didn’t know what it meant until about 5 years ago.