Quaint Expressions

18 years ago

The other day I came face to face with the fact that many of the terms I still use are archaic. I asked my son to turn on the hi-fi, but he didn't know what I was talking about! I also told him to put the bowl of leftover pasta salad in the icebox. So what did he do? He dragged out the picnic cooler and proceeded to fill it with ice! He thought I was nuts for laughing, until I calmed down enough to explain what I really meant and then he thought it was funny too.

Since then he's been pouncing on every old-fashioned word or phrase I use -- and, boy!, there are a lot them. Here are a few terms that he caught me saying:
turn the dial for changing the station on the radio

crank the car to start the engine (I never thought of how old that expression is; I must have inherited it from my grandparents.)

ptomaine to mean food poisoning, in general

I don't use this myself, but I recall older people than me saying "holped" for the past tense of help, instead of helped. I thought it was grammatical ignorance until I learned recently that holp and holped were considered legitimate at one time.

I think we've discussed reckon and yonder before in some of our RP word threads. I'm fond of both, and I think their demise leaves a vacuum.

What about you? Do you ever notice a communication gap between you and your kids or younger folk? Do you have some pet old-time expressions? I'd love to read 'em, and I'll bet I recognize many that I use myself.

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Comments (150)

disputantum
18 years ago
The straight dope from the OED is that dope is apparently from the Dutch doop meaning dip. The earliest usage is a thick liquid, food, or lubricant, or medicine. The earliest citation for it to mean information is 1901. Dope still means a paste or liquid as in plumber's dope used to seal pipe threads.
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
Dope is an old word for cola. As a kid I can remember calling it dopey-cola, but that may have been something I made up myself.
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disputantum
18 years ago
"Dope is an old word for cola."

The OED mentions that too.
disputantum
18 years ago
An experiment to find out the straight dope: {{gwi:2117399}} and {{gwi:2117400}}. I wanted to see if my scanner could pick up the micrographic print at 1200 dpi. Let me know if it's readable. If the images have been resized to fit on the screen, click on the icon in the lower right in IE, or on the image in Firefox.
granjan
18 years ago
I've been away a few days. To go back a ways, midwesterners still often call their basements cellars. But people on the East coast don't know what that means.

And for years no one knew what capris were until they came back in fashion recently. Although we usually called them pedalpushers. And we called dressy boots, fashion boots to differentiate them from our snow boots. When was the last time you saw a pair of rubbers or golashes? And why don't young children's mittens come attached by yarn that goes through both sleeves?

Is there another name for the glove compartment? Strange. No one's ever put gloves in there that I know of.
granjan
18 years ago
Well I may hijack this thread with this one but I'm begining to feel like I'm the only person left who actually says that my father died! And he did! He didn't pass 6th grade or pass Go and collect $200 and i don't beleive he passed over to the other side (The other side of what?)He died. That means he is no longer living. I loved him and I miss him but he is dead and there is NOTHING wrong with the word dead! I feel like our whole society has become Victorian prudes who can't use the words for proper body parts. Why did this start at the end of the 20th century. And the latest is that now even pets aren't dying anymore. They are also passing. I HATE THIS.
bookmom41
18 years ago
cindy, thanks for '70's attire reminder. Not only did we wear teeny cut-offs, parents let us out of the house wearing tube tops and "halter tops" which were 2 bandanas tied together at strategic points. I would never let my preteen out dressed in those tops but I think even the 70's were a more innocent time as compared to now.

Granjan--I'm laughing about your reference to pedal-pushers. A friend and I had a real laugh about her mother calling her up to see if she left her "pedal-pushers" at her house after her last visit. Capris it is. FWIW, my father-in-law died two years ago; I never heard the word "passed" until I moved to Baltimore and even here, it's usage seems to be more common in the African-American community. As for cellar, growing up (on the East Coast) it was a basement if it was finished, cellars were unfinished. After my parents finished our basement and it became the family room, my grandmother was highly indignant that we expected her to go down into the cellar to watch TV.
georgia_peach
18 years ago
Oblige is another one of those words, like reckon and yonder, that has fallen out of use.
cindydavid4
18 years ago
>Why did this start at the end of the 20th century

It didn't - its a vestige of the old Victorian mores, and in some communites has never gone away. I am frustrated by it too - I think nothing of saying that my parents died or a good friend died. And no one seems shocked by it.

And please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss. I do know how frustrating it is to hear what people sometimes say in an effort to console. I know it rarely works; that takes a strong shoulder, and a ready to listen ear. I hope you find both.
martin_z
18 years ago
Yes. People do die. I don't quite see what's wrong with that phrase. I admit I'd not be pleased if someone said "I'm sorry to hear your father popped his clogs" or something like that, but I don't mind if they say "died". "Passed away" is the euphemism that I think is most commonly used here in the UK - I can accept that because it's so ubiquitous.

And changing the subject, but still on euphemisms - I still have to think twice if an American comes into the office and asks me where the washroom is. If I go to the US office, I normally ask where the Gents is - seems to work well in the US - at least, I've not had any obvious double-takes!
georgia_peach
18 years ago
>I've run across people my age who think the Beatles originated "Twist and Shout" and Elvis did the original "Blue Suede Shoes." No, no, it was the Isley Brothers and Carl Perkins, respectively.

This reminds me... when did musicians start covering songs rather than remaking them? I grew up using the term, that song is a remake of the old Isley Brothers tune. But now they are covers. I think this may be a matter of people using inside trade jargon much more readily today (and let's face it, it is used all over the internet) than in decades past. People like myself who use the old, generic layman terms appear very unsophisticated and behind the times compared to those who use the "correct" or specialized jargon (or, that's what I call it anyway).
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
Dyno, easy to read and fascinating. I really must get myself one of those.

Granjan, When you bring up the question of how we speak of death, I realized I'm likely to say that "We lost Daddy back in 2000." Yes, I know, that sounds like I expect to find him in the mall the next time I'm there.
woodnymph2_gw
18 years ago
I have been guilty of saying "passed away," but that is far better than "kicked the bucket...."

I have always lived on the East Coast and have always heard both cellar and basement, as in, "I'm going down-cellar, now."

I really like the charm of obliged, as in "I'm much obliged to ye," heard often in the south when I was growing up.

As for clothing, anyone remember bermuda shorts, the tent dress and the "muumuu"? Re the short "mini skirts", I would swear that is why the pants suits for women were invented, which we were encouraged to wear to work, at that point in time.
granjan
18 years ago
You remember being encouraged to wear pants suit? I remember being forbidden to wear pants. I taught junior high in the Bronx in the mini skirt era. No one my age would have been caught dead in anything longer than mid thigh and the mael students would stand at the bottom of the stairs to check out our underwear! But NO FEMALE was allowed to wear pants! And there were huge debates about how unflattering pants were on any female over a size 10! What is flattering about a size 18 dress?

A personal note. 40 years ago I arrived on my honeymoon, in the Summer of Lovehere in SF. The goal of my new, and later ex-husband was to purchase some recreational smoking material we were too afraid to locate at our midwestern university. Along with those mini skirts I had a brand new, daring pants suit that I wore on the bus to Haight Ashbury. I was thrilled to be taken for an "insider" by the suburban teeny bopper who asked if this was the right bus to get to the hippies!
friedag
Original Author
18 years ago
Thank you, disputantum, for all the dope on dope. I could read the first link just fine but not the second one.

Muumuus will never go out of style in Hawai'i. There was one version of shortened pants that we called kneeknockers, but I don't know if they were the same as pedalpushers or capri pants.

I was in high school in the late sixties. My English teacher commented one day as she walked the aisles between our desks that just ten years before she had had to be careful not to step on the girls' skirts because they swept the floor as the girls sat. She shook her head ruefully and said, "Now your skirts don't even reach the edges of your seats." Our Home Ec teacher was obsessed with the length of our dresses and skirts. She implored us to carry men's handkerchiefs so that we could spread them on any seat before we sat down. This was the same teacher who advised us to use an overturned cookpot to sit on when we took a bath. I don't know of anyone who followed her direction.

We weren't allowed to wear pants suits in high school or my first two years of college (it was a cow college, too); but when I got to university, it was anything goes, pretty much. We even went barefooted, which was ludicrous in West Texas where grass burrs, cockle burrs, and goatheads were everywhere.

I did show up at my job wearing a nice pants suit one time. My supervisor called me into his office and shut the door. He told me that he would give me an hour to find something more appropriate to wear. What was I to do? I borrowed a dress from a co-worker who lived nearby. Actually, I think he just didn't want the women to wear pants because he was a dirty old man. This was long before sexual harrassment made it into our vocabulary.
veer
18 years ago
granjan, same here in the UK with women wearing trousers to work (at least in my experience) and this was in the early '70's. A couple of older women felt very strongly about this and asked me (a newcomer) to go with them and speak to the 'boss'. He was very old-fashioned and straight-laced and I could see him giving me my cards as the quaint English saying goes for getting the sack.
He must have relented but still went on to ruffle a few female feathers after walking up the stairs behind an elderly woman worker who, he noticed, was not wearing stockings!
This elderly lady of unsullied virtue (she had been a missionary and thought nylons to be 'frivolous') refused to bow before the male oppressor and continued to go bare legged even in deepest winter.
I arrived in SF just as the Summer of Love was turning into the Fall of Was-it-all-Worth-it. I stayed at the 'Y' among strange derelict old bag ladies and was warned never to go out of the building between about 8 at night and 8 the next morning and the desk clerk seemed surprised that I wasn't a Hippy because I had a reefer jacket (not the smoking sort) the height of fashion in the UK but obviously a sign of decadence in California.
Certainly there was far more 'smoking of substances' going on in the US than in the UK or Canada, yet these young people were too afraid to be seen with a beer . .. it would have been the other way round in England.
cindydavid4
18 years ago
> when did musicians start covering songs rather than remaking them?

At least since the 50s - can't think of the tune but remember a song from the early decade that was remade into a hit I think by Elvis. I often don't mind - Leonard Cohen wrote Bird on a Wire which was never one of my favorite songs. But it was covered a few years back into an original kind of beat and its wonderful. Sort of like watching different versions of plays esp Shakespeare - sometimes they bomb, but other times you are thrilled with the new original interpretation.
georgia_peach
18 years ago
I probably didn't make myself clear above (I tend to ramble). I meant the usage of "cover" to replace the usage of "remake" when referring to the new recording of a previously recorded song by another artist. In the 70s and 80s (even 90s I would daresay) it was still very common to say something like, this is a remake of the Isley Brothers tune. Today, most people say cover or covered instead. According to the online etymology dictionary this usage of cover originated in 1966.

Okay... I promise... I'll stop now.
cindydavid4
18 years ago
Oh, ok - actually its only been recently since I heard the term and had to hear and see it a few times in context to figure out what it meant. Does that dictionary give the background (ie how it started)?
friedag
Original Author
18 years ago
I always said "remake" until I got on the Internet, circa 1995. Some music mavens can be rather toity if you don't use the proper jargon, so I converted to "cover" -- at least in writing.

People's reluctance to say "died" reminds me that at one time the word pregnant was never uttered in polite company. During the old "I Love Lucy" show when Lucille Ball was actually pregnant, Lucy Ricardo was going to have a baby too, among other euphemisms. I think some of those are downright silly:
preggers -- sheesh! This was a favorite of teenage girls that I always hated.
a bun in the oven (roll eyes)
up the duff (offensive, if you ask me)
the family way
That way

I ended a conversation with my husband's grandmother when she asked me how I liked the Smithsonian. I replied without thinking, "Oh I would love to see it when I'm not pregnant." (My feet hurt too much for me to completely enjoy it.) That word would probably have been okay if it was just she and I, but her husband was also there.

I don't hear the euphemisms for pregnancy as much anymore. Do you?
dynomutt
18 years ago
Actually, I don't hear euphemisms for "pregnant" any more. Interestingly enough, I vaguely remember something from The Book of Lists about network censors censoring the term "pregnant" from episodes of "I Love Lucy". This was interesting since, well, Lucy WAS pregnant! Apparently, they considered the French term "enciente" in the title because the didn't want to use "pregnant". And Lucy was only allowed to say "expecting" or "expectant".

I don't get it -- what was so bad with the term "pregnant"?! Maybe I'm from a different generation so I won't really understand?!

Here is a link that might be useful: IMDB site mentioning the censorship
leel
18 years ago
Well, you see, pregnancy indicates that sex has taken place, while expecting is akin to " a little stranger is about to arrive." Nuance is everything.
woodnymph2_gw
18 years ago
Re non-use of the term "pregnant" -- remember when the baby came and the sibling was told there had been a "visit from the stork"? We don't have storks in my part of the U.S. and I recall having a discussion on this term with my German friends, where storks frequently nest in chimneys. I also seem to recall something about the baby having been "found under a cabbage leaf."

Also, for "she got pregnant", substitute "knocked up" (rather crude). As well, I recall "something in the oven."

Vee, what is a "reefer jacket"?

Would some kind person like to archive this interesting thread? (I would, but I don't know how).
veer
18 years ago
Mary, after some searching I find a 'reefer' is known as a pea jacket/coat in the US. They had been standard wear in the Navy but modified for women. Navy blue, brass or plain buttons, double breasted, often both flat and angled pockets and slightly longer than usual but less than three-quarter. Very comfortable and useful and in the mid to late '60's a 'must-have' garment in the UK.

English babies were found under gooseberry bushes, a most prickly place to start life. And over here a woman was described as being in an interesting condition.
Somewhere Dickens wrote about how American women were 'put away' for the several months from the time it became obvious they were pregnant, which didn't happen in England.
It was probably on his US tour with his poor wife who had a baby for every year of their married life. And to think he already kept a Mistress and had designs on his wife's younger sister, until she died, when he took up with the next sister along.

Martin is good at saving these threads, but I don't know his email address. Does anyone?

Here is a link that might be useful: A 60's style reefer/pea jacket
granjan
18 years ago
Pea coats were also de riguer in the US for hipsters of the late 60's and 70's. But ours almost always had the dark US navy buttons. No shiny goldlike on a blazer.Never heard of it as a reefer.
Kath
18 years ago
With regard to not saying 'pregnant', I just wish today the women wouldn't show me pregnant!! I can't be the only one who doesn't like the look of a pregnant woman with a tight fitting top on. You shouldn't have to hide it away, but I don't see the need to shove it in other's faces either.
Rant over *g*
cindydavid4
18 years ago
Astro, you are not the only one. You shouldn't hide, and it is a beautiful thing, but for heaven's sakes have a little bit of common sense and respect for your own body? (but then seeing how many young women dress, its obvious that they have neither to begin with. And yes, I suspect my parents said the same thing about me and my friends).

When I was growing up, being pregnant was hush hush like getting divorced. Once the baby was born everything was wonderful, but you weren't supposed to talk about the pregnancy. I also remember a classmate in HS who was kicked out for being pregnant. Never heard what happened to her, but remember the kids really giving her a hard time. Now its not a big deal at least where I live. Many of our high schools even have day care centers for them.
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
I rather like the look of a healthy pregnant woman in close fitting clothes. The epitome of a goddess, a Venus figurine come to life.
robert-e
18 years ago
Yes, the school I taught at had a student day care, and it even operated thoughout the summer holidays; so things certainly have changed.

Hey Cindy...the retired teachers "To Hell With the Bell" brunch is on tomorrow. Great fun; I will be thinking of you.

Regards,
Bob
laceyvail 6A, WV
18 years ago
My favorite (very old)expression for being pregnant is "standing behind a baby."
georgia_peach
18 years ago
Re social mores, we recently watched the old Disney movie, That Darn Cat (Haley Mills, Dean Jones) with our kids. The busy body neighbor was upset because an unknown man was seen coming and going from the girls' home (gasp -- unchaperoned!). During the drive-in movie theatre chase scene, my daughter turned to me and said quite puzzled, "you watched movies in your car back then?" She couldn't imagine that experience.

Thought of a few more expressions...

This thread reminded me of an NPR commentary from several years ago. The commentator was remarking on the phrase, if you could put a man on the moon, why can't.... He proposed that that phrase has lost its edge, but there is yet no adequate replacement in our popular imagination. I was thinking this morning if streaming video can work so well, why can't my computer boot up that quickly? I don't know... I guess I don't have an adequate comparison, either.

I was thinking about other expressions that seem like they would be dated, but they seem in no danger of disappearing. For example, I still hear people say, it's just a stone's throw away from...

And with regard to my job and some of their ridiculous notions for goals, I found myself thinking today, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip ... (but they'll try!).
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
The threads on re-reads had me picking up a couple of Emilie Loring novels, Keepers of the Faith and I Take This Man, wherein all the women wear frocks. Did women, er, ladies, really wear frocks in the 40s? Or was that only for women who dressed for dinner every night?
veer
18 years ago
Chris, in English English the word 'frock' and 'dress' are interchangeable. When I was a very young child in the '40's I always wore a 'frock'. Gradually 'dress' has taken over as the more common word and a 'frock' has come to mean something more summery and perhaps 'frilly'.
As for formal evening wear females always wear an 'evening dress' ie something long (and probably low) while a man wears either a dinner jacket (black tie) or tails (white tie).
We don't use the word tuxedo over here, nor do men wear them for posh weddings. They wear 'morning coats'.

Sorry getting trivial here. :-)
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
Thanks Veer. The characters in the books are all of the gracious living sort -- the poor ones all have housekeepers -- and I wondered if "frock" was only used by women who wore couture. I don't think I ever heard it used here in the States.

Informal wear is what confuses us here. We tend to think it means casual.
carolyn_ky
18 years ago
My great-aunt used to use the word frock, but you could hear the quotation marks around it when she did. She was raised by her grandmother, and I always thought it was an old word gone out of usage a century ago.
sheriz6
18 years ago
When I hear the word frock, I picture Mrs. Cleaver in her everyday, immaculate, full-skirted, cinch-waisted dress (with pearl necklace) and high heels. I first came across the word in my older editions of Nancy Drew and the Dana Girls books, so it's always been a very familiar term. I've never heard it used in conversation, though.
veer
18 years ago
Chris if the poor people have housekeepers who do the rich employ to do their work?

And on the housekeeper word. I have noticed that several US RP'ers use it and I wonder if your meaning is someone who does the cleaning around the place maybe once or twice a week; the 'hired help', or a person who is employed to run your entire household, have control of the other staff.
Think Mrs Danvers, though not necessarily quite so nasty.

I would have thought informal meant casual although there is 'casual' and 'casual'. Some people might think of designer jeans and a cashmere sweater as understated, while typical English chavs might go for a very cropped T shirt and micro skirt accessorised by orange fake tan and weighed down by gold chains.
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
Veer, I should have said that even the least prosperous of Emilie Lorings heroines still manage to have hired help.

Informal is dressy but not "formal" - cocktail dress for the women and suits for the men.

The housekeepers I grew up with were there everyday to clean and do laundry. I don't know anyone who employs a housekeeper these days. Everybody has a cleaning service that comes regularly. I cannot address what the billionaire set do to keep their houses clean.
lemonhead101
18 years ago
My mum was just here in TX visiting me from England and she said a couple of phrases that I had never heard before:

* Below the salt - can't remember what this one means. Anyone?
* Dot and carry one (for when someone is limping)

She wasn't sure of the origin of these phrases but we thought they were interesting.
cindydavid4
18 years ago
I am guessing on the first one - there are many phrases about salt, usually meaning something rare and valued (think salt of the earth). Salt was considered currency in Roman times and was very valuable in the middle ages. I am expecting that below the salt is lesser value?
friedag
Original Author
18 years ago
I actually know about the origin of "below the salt" because I learned it from a Thomas B. Costain novel with that title many moons ago.

It indicates status. In medieval times, when the nobles gave banquets, or attended them, they were seated prominently either on a dais or at the head of the table with their own salt cellars in front of them. Other diners were placed according to their rank, either above the salt cellars (closest to the noble guests) that were strategically placed in the midst of the one main table or auxiliary tables. Those of low status were seated below the salt, thus most removed from the noblest guests. So, yes, in a way it does indicate lesser value, but I've only heard it applied to people.

I've never run across the "dot and carry one" expression.
ginny12
18 years ago
I am another one who learned the word "frock" from the original Nancy Drew books. I don't think this word was used after WW2 in the US. Newspaper ads would answer the question, if anyone wants to hunker down over the microfilm--tho I guess it's all online now.

Nancy also drove a roadster, a word that still puzzles me.
Kath
18 years ago
Dot and carry one I think just refers to the gait of a limping person. The good leg does a 'dot' and then they 'carry one'.
veer
18 years ago
Don't hear 'dot and carry' used much over here these days possibly because it is not considered politically correct or in good taste to draw attention to the misfortunes of others, although this doesn't seem to apply to parts of Continental Europe.
OT, but a TV travel show once did an item on the difficulty of using public transport when incapacitated by a broken leg.
A reporter was fitted up with a plaster cast and sent to France and Spain to see how he did. In both countries he was the source of endless mirth as he hobbled along, with many members of the public being too doubled up with laughter at his plight to offer help.
In case this gives the impression that we in the UK are paragons of virtue and kindliness, the same TV show arranged for a wheel-chair-bound woman to test out accessibility of hotels. Several were so impossible to get into she had to return with a 'helper' the following day.
Once they finally reached the reception desk the manager welcomed them with "We saw you trying to get in here yesterday" .. :-(

I thought a roadster was the old name for an open car?
woodnymph2_gw
18 years ago
I've never heard the term "dot and carry" before. One word I never hear anymore is the term "gimpy", meaning one who limps. I first encountered it in the ballet world, years ago. I guess now, it is non P.C.

As for the term roadster, like Vee, I always assumed it meant an open car, such as we used to call a "convertible", judging from the illustrations in the old Nancy Drew mysteries I have.
martin_z
18 years ago
Yep - a roadster is an open-top convertible. Here's a Jaguar E-type roadster like the one I used to own (only mine was dark green).

{{gwi:2117402}}
Chris_in_the_Valley
18 years ago
Somehow, I'd never apply the term roadster to the 1967 Mustang Convertible.
cindydavid4
18 years ago
I want that car.
veer
18 years ago
Cindy, you should have got to know Martin about 20 years ago. Is that type of car, especially when in British Racing Green known as a 'bird puller' elsewhere?
martin_z
18 years ago
I have to say, Cindy, it was a wrench letting it go. But I'd had the car for five years, and I needed the money more.

Here's mine. Well, the one that used to be mine. Sigh.

{{gwi:2117403}}

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