We used to have a racing greyhound (or I should say my stepdad did). He wanted to name her Eat-the-Bunny, but that name was already taken.
Until maybe 5 years ago, when I would pick up the phone at work*, if the caller were not someone I recognized by name/number, I would do as I was trained/taught to do 30+ years ago: to say my name first in the greeting - something like “hello, this is robardin”.
(In fact, the way I was originally trained I was supposed to say the company/department name first, and THEN identify myself - “Pfizer Systems, robardin speaking” - but come on now.)
One time the person on the other end was actually nonplussed by this. “Why would you say that? I called YOU, of course I know it’s you.”
“It’s a way to reassure you hadn’t dialed the wrong number, or that someone else had picked up the phone.”
“Huh. Does that ever happen?”
“I guess not.”
*Nowadays I don’t even have a phone to pick up, most of my work communication begins with a chat message followed by a teleconference call, usually video but possibly audio only, either way no cradle-and-receiver button-pushing type dialing or receiving is involved.
I love talking about what things “used to be.”
The BP used to be an Amoco, I still call it Amoco. That used to be a Superfresh, and before that A&P. The Walgreens lot was a gas station. That used to be woods. That was the old Safeway, not to be confused with the old old Safeway.
All that sort of thing.
I called one of the local drugstores “Perry’s” for the longest.
Of course she did. It was right next to the pie safe.
I couldn’t say; but possibly due to situations where there was a choice between ether and something else, like chloroform, in an either/or question. If you asked a colleague whether they recommended using ether or chloroform, and they answerd “ether”, you couldn’t mishear that as “either”.
I don’t think they used ether much in my dad’s time, but he could have picked it up from his own father, who had also been a doctor, beginning around 1915.
Why this one? Is it this particular wording, or that old people are supposed to be hard of hearing? If it’s the wording, how else would you say it?
On a modern television, what do you actually “turn” to increase the volume?
You mean Standard?
But that’s not an “old-personism,” that’s just the standard phrase that is always used by everyone to indicate sound levels going up or down. “Turn it up.” “Turn it down.” I don’t know how else you would expect someone to say it. “Press up the volume?” That doesn’t work.
“Increase the volume” or “raise the volume” is how someone who’d never encountered a volume knob would probably say it. Or just “make it louder”.
The terms many of us use today are the terms that were current 60 years ago when our parents taught us about this stuff. It’s not that those terms are obsolete or now wrong. But they are anachronistic or antiquated from the POV of somebody who’s 10 or 15 years old now.
Said another way, you and I mostly aren’t gaining elderisms. Instead the core of our youthful vocabulary has become an elderism. While we have not kept up with the slowly morphing standards of youthful speech.
How to you make a room colder? Do you turn the air conditioner up or down?
I “put the air on” (make it colder) or “turn the air off” (don’t make it colder). I don’t think there’s a way to make it colder faster: it goes as fast as it goes.
Mrs. J. and I were discussing changes to our wills today, and I found myself cackling in a Scrooge-like voice about the prospect of scaling down bequests to certain relatives.
“They can starve and go begging on the streets, I say! Hee-hee!!”
Not even for really cool jazz?
I think it’s taken a generation or more for old time telephone terms like “dial” and “hang up” to fade significantly frkm the scene. Most things involving tech are probably similar in that regard.
I agree. You have to put the taller items near the edges or they’ll block some of the shorter dishes from the spray.
But I don’t understand what this has to any kind of phone. Expressions like “pleased to meet you” or “how do you do” would normally be used in the context of an in-person introduction.
ETA: This was unacceptable. You didn’t go there for fun, much less to be mocked by the staff. I would have made sure someone in charge knew about it.
It’s the last knock-knock joke in a string that starts like this:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Ether
Ether who?
Ether Bunny.
And it goes on with jokes like this one.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Justin
Justin who?
Justin other Ether Bunny.
etc.