I can’t even begin to guess what that means. Drunk? High? Never heard it. What era and perhaps area is it known in?
cool.
Cool is a rule, but sometimes bad is bad - Huey Lewis
Words that have gone out of use (in UK anyway): ‘gear’ vs ‘grotty’. From Liverpool Beatles era, though I think they were mostly popularized by the comedian Ken Dodd…
I still like "ticketty-boo: though… everyone in our family knows what that means!
aged badly:
“I’ve known him since Buck was a calf”
I’m 44 and recall the same debate with a teacher as a sophomore. We were perplexed why she thought it was vulgar. I also distinctly recall reading a newspaper editorial that discussed the change in the idiom by explaining that, in present day (mid 1990s) vernacular, “a vacuum that doesn’t suck sucks.” I think somebody had brought it in to show her.
Whereas “booty call” and “butt dial” have distinctly different meanings.
Or the lit-meh-bogus spectrum, but no doubt that’s out of date too.
“Saucered and blowed” means a task or project is fully completed. From the Great Depression days, it’s when someone would buy a cup of coffee at a cafeteria, they’d fill the cup fully and let the excess coffee run onto and fill the saucer. You’d then have to blow on the hot coffee to drink it.
I used to have a regular weekly breakfast with some 90 year old guys.
I really wanted this to be something on a price board in a hair salon…or a brothel.
To those young’uns who are perplexed as to why “sucks” should be considered vulgar: it’s short for “sucks dick.” The oldsters who are offended by this, still hear the implied “dick” lurking nearby.
I’ve never found these expressions to be offensive, since I grew up in NYC where all conversations were punctuated with what the rest of the country considered to be curse words–but which we used as everyday speech, and did not shock most New Yorkers.
Not only would we say, “that sucks,” but it was not uncommon for someone to reply, “it sucks a donkey dick” (if the particular situation had been truly dire).
I also suspect that “suck an egg” (as someone mentioned) may be a euphemistic substitution for “suck dick.”
No, but I believe the original idiom was at some time “linguistically hijacked.” I don’t know what the linguistic terminology for such a hijacking is, but I’m curious to know what that phenomenon is called…?
I’ve also heard it as “it sucks dog dicks.”
Anyone know of any other animals that have been fellated?
I have heard “it sucks pipe” as a euphemism.
A very familiar football (soccer) chant from a while ago. When abusing an opposing player/manager or referee,
“He’s the meanest, he sucks a horse’s penis”
I won’t rest until i can bring back “It’s a gas!”
The horse probably didn’t think he was the meanest.
How about “Guy”? Is that even slang any more?
Or “Kid”, for that matter?
Actually, the 1930s, and more widely by the late '40s:
Slang use of cool for “fashionable” is by 1933, originally African-American vernacular; its modern use as a general term of approval is from the late 1940s, probably via bop talk and originally in reference to a style of jazz; the word is said to have been popularized in jazz circles by tenor saxophonist Lester Young (1909-1959). Cool-headed “not easily excited or confused” is from 1742.
From here (cited above).
I’ve always watched movies from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, so sometime in the late ‘80s or early’ 90s I decided to start calling things I liked or approved of “swell.”
So you can thank me for the upswell (har) in popularity of that expression.
So the cool considerate men in 1776 weren’t so named because of their fashionable wig powder?
Sportscaster Red Barber’s heyday was before I paid much attention to baseball. Apparently, he used “sitting in the catbird seat” to mean being in a good situation as a player. He also used “suck-egg mule,” and I have no idea what he meant by that.