I also say gollywompers!
ETA: And gosharooty…but I’m a Cutey Bunny fan.
This all just hunky and dory.
It slips out of me from time to time “unsarcastically.”
Groovy is the name of an Oracle scripting language, and I’m a technical writer. It used to make me giggle when I’d write something about “writing a Groovy script,” but I’m used to it by now.
My first sign language (ASL) class in 1985 used tapes that were made around 1979, and a sign the would probably be translated “cool” or “sweet,” depending on the context (and wouldn’t be used in a formal situation) is translated as “groovy.” The guy doing it really does look like he’s saying “groovy”-- I mean, he’s pretty clean cut for the late 70s, but he looks like someone who would have said “groovy” a lot in 1969. (I think he was the one hearing person who appeared in the videos).
Anyway, it’s a totally sincere use of groovy. Got plenty of laughs from us. The sign is still used plenty, and is not marked or dated at all. That does not mean that in 1969 “groovy” was not a legitimate translation, just as in 1985, “awesome” was probably better. If I saw it today, I’m not sure what I’d say. It would depend on the age of the signer, and the context.
If I had been further along in my ASL studies, I might have challenged the translation in the video, except, like I said, the signer looked like someone who might still say groovy in 1979.
I say it from time to time just to mess with young people. Like for instance saying to a young girl (college age) at work, “If you could do such-and-so, it would be ever so groovy!” Invariably I get twinkling eyes, a raised voice and faux outrage…“EVER SO GROOVY”!!!???
What year did the movie “I Love You Alice BToklas” come out? My cousin and I both saw that. We had never used the word “groovy” although of course we’d heard it, but we knew we weren’t old enough or hip enough to actually use it. But after that movie we both used it, but sarcastically.
We were teenagers. Everything we said, we said sarcastically.
I think “boss” lasted 4 months. “Cool” had died out until my buddy’s older brother (who had opened and ran the first head shop in our area until a judge told him “Jail or Army”) came back from a tour in Nam and used it.
Yea, I’ve said “groovy” probably twice today. It’s another phrase I use to convey a feeling of “affirmative”, “i hear ya”, “that’s great”, etc.
Dead & Company are playing a gig tonight, I’m be amazed if someone there doesn’t use it unironically.
He can say “groovy” unsarcastically. He’s the most interesting man in the world!
It’s part of my, very occasional, very off-beat arsenal of expressions. Most specifically, when my dogs are horsing around, I will sound out: firesign theater/ You Guys are Sooooo Groovy /firesign theater.
But is it in that reconstructed way? As in, you know it’s used sarcastically, so you find humor in using it non-sarcastically? Kinda like how hipsters sometimes talk?
In a National Public Media radio story about British P.M. Theresa May, a BBC reporter spoke of how May “Socked it to them.”
I didn’t hear the rest of it, I was laughing so hard.
I will use it now and then at work but I am known there as a major Evil Dead fan so people understand no sarcasm is involved.
A Twitter search shows a couple of uses per minute.
An ex of mine would use it every once in a while.
I’m pretty sure she used it because she thought she was being “different” or “unique” or whatever, but regardless, she was using it genuinely.