Oh no…I hear this one all the time! By the way, “bay window” is apparently so out of fashion that someone didn’t even know it had been used in this manner. I’m sure I’ve heard Fred Mertz say it on I Love Lucy, so it must have been in use around that time. “Potbelly” is obviously really old- when was the last time anybody actually used a potbelly stove?
“Why, thankee Mister, that’s mighty white of you.”
I love this thread. Scalawag, ruffian, hooligan, ne’er do well, hoodlum and evildoer. I live in a tough part of town.
Lots of names for tradesmen have been dumbed down in the vernacular:
I think I once confused Kevbabe when I mentioned needing to take a pair of shoes to the cobbler’s for fresh soles.
A friend-of-a-friend earns a living fixing guitars. Once I couldn’t think of his name and referred to him as the luthier. Bob said “I thought I was the only one who knew that word!”
I still hear of carpenters, but more and more they are becoming builders or construction workers. Mason is now as likely to refer to a member of a fraternal order, as to a stone worker or bricklayer.
Haven’t heard anyone refer to a potbelly stove in a long time, but potbelly pigs are popular pets (though I can’t imagine why, personally. :P)
“Fink” was on the list of words we children were not allowed to use. We would have been shocked to hear our grandmother use it.
How about ‘sling your hook’ meaning ‘get lost’. I know it’s a Britishism from over a hundred years ago, don’t know if any Brits actually still say it, but I hear it all the time on Eastenders.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
Not a word that’s fallen out of fashion, but this reminds me of when saying something sucks was considered somewhat offensive. I think I heard the reason is that it’s a reference to a blow-job.
Eegads, you put the Marconi and the Victrola in the parlour? We wouldn’t dream of cluttering our parlour with such newfangled doohickeys.
Burns: Yes, I’d like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?
Another term that has fallen into disuse is desuetude. Which means “falling into disuse”.
I think that would be bitchin’, you know, like short for bitching.
Never knew it was trail mix stuff. In this part of the world it was a synonym for gloop.
A coworker and I would use the term, which we had both used in elementary school, to gross out other coworkers. “Where’s my rubber? Who stole my rubber? You took my rubber!”
Tranny could get you in a lot of trouble today. Using combo, though, proves you’re a real hep cat.
Or from ‘30s gangster movies. "It’s your nickel. Start talkin’. (I use it occaisonally, depending on the name showing up on my corded and cordless Don Ameches.)
An uncle, a First World War vet, would say “What the deuce!” I’ve since come across it in Sherlock Holmes movies.
My dad quit saying “icebox” only after we laughed at him for a couple of years. I’d roll my eyes at his use of “car fare,” but then I ended up in Toronto. So I guess he’d get the last laugh.
Slight hijack,
In Mona Lisa Overdrive(William Gibson creator of cyberpunk for the uninitiated) one of the characters is afraid to make a payphone type of call because it could be traced. Of course no one had heard of cell phones when the book was written.
Would you deign to motor with us to luncheon, in a fortnights time?
What sort of victuals will be on offer?
Fortnight is a pretty cromulent word, in some parts of the English-speaking world anyway.
Now, now, none of your shenanigans!
There was a boy in my class named Richard. The other boys took great amusement in calling out, “Hey, you gotta rubber, Dick?” They thought it the height of hilarity, mostly because they couldn’t get into trouble from the teachers.
Canadians used to call July 1st “Dominion Day” but somewhere around 1980 or so it became “Canada Day” Maybe after we repatriated the Constitution in 1982? There used to be a number of stores and companies named “Dominion ________” but I haven’t seen too many of those recently.