I’ve been watching old 60’s TV reruns and realized I can’t recalled the last time IRL I heard: lame brained, dad burned, holy mackerel, bone headed, …
Anything that is ethnic or national related is taboo, as is anything suggesting a disability. For instance, Ralph Kramden say to Ed Norton, “You are a mental case.”
Outside of overweight people and to a lesser degree gay people, any insult is no do-able unless you are one of those groups.
TV used to be a good soure of “Safe” expressions, because they couldn’t use the real ones. Now they can just use the real ones instead.
I often wonder if anyone did use some of these expressions in real life, that I see on TV. On the flip side, I think some TV shows brought some expressions back. I never heard anyone use “Dingbat” or the word “stifle” till All In The Family, then suddenly I heard it all over the place.
My dad was quite fond of “Caesar’s ghost!” or “Great Caesar’s ghost!” I don’t hear that much anymore.
Cripes
Criminey
Jehosaphat
Haven’t heard any of those in a while.
“Stop that, you wantwit! I might get stung by a bumbled bee!” [Mr. Burns]
I would propose that “sockdologizing old man-trap” went out of fashion on April 14, 1865.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries
You Harlot!
nincompoop!
camelopardis! (extra points if you get that one. double if you know the OTHER show.)
Knave
Beggarly
super-serviceable finical rogue
one-trunk-inheriting slave
whoreson
Son and heir of a mongrel bitch
For that matter… mongrel
brazen-faced varlet
King… Lear? What is this King Lear you speak of?
Hark? Whoopsiedaisies? My grandpa would occasionally say “well blow me down,” which I believe Popeye also said.
Those may have gone out of fashion on tv, but people still use them. I hear them all the time.
I use that one a lot (I’m 36). I even pull out a “lame brained” every once in a while.
Blockhead doesn’t get much love these days, even with the ongoing availability of Peanuts cartoons. And, I am the only person I know who regularly uses “dolt”.
Mild, archaic terms of contempt are really useful at times. They’re great when I want to mock someone while showing that their stupidity doesn’t really get to me.
Gadzooks!
I like ‘criminy!’ and ‘dagnabbit’ for office-safe ejaculations, but it’s really hard to beat ‘Jiminy CRICKET!’ for an expression of astonishment that’ll raise eyebrows all round.
I also drop a “drat” or a generic “curses” here and there, usually ironically. If my wife is beating me at a board game, I’ll erupt with a “curses!”
ETA: One of my dad’s favorites was “poppycock!” (used when a coarser man might say, “bullshit”). I dredge that one up now and again, but I have never heard anyone else say it.
Dickens often shortened that to just “Blow me!” The look you get on someone’s face when they think you’re a dusty old fogey for reading Dickens and you flash them a page where a character says: “Blow me!” = Priceless.
Bugs Bunny said a lot of them. Maroon and nincompoop are the first ones to come to mind, except he called the charging bull a nin-cow-poop.
“Judas Priest!” was an oath my grandfather used to mutter under his breath quite frequently, especially when disgusted by modern culture, like The Beatles or airplane hijackers.
When someone at school asks if they can do something to help whatever I’m currently overwhelmed with, I’ll say: “Golly, that would be swell!”
Used to hear “Criminently!”, a variation of criminey I suppose.