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"Fresh" or "Getting Fresh" ... as in "Irma, did that boy who took you to the drive-in picture show try to get fresh with you?!"
"Fast" as in "Oh! What a flirt Connie is! She's getting a reputation for being a 'fast' girl!"
"Family Way" for pregnant: "I heard Eunice is in the 'family way' ..."
"Pansy" for effeminate gay man: "That Liberace is such a Pansy!"
other words you don't hear much nowadays:
'High and Mighty' (a critical comment for pretentiousness)
'High Falutin' (fancy or pretentious)
'Co-ed' (a female college student)
'GI' (a soldier)
'Xerox' (to make a photocopy)
'dressing gown' for bathrobe
'drawers' for underwear
I'm always amused when news stories talk about something happening to a "co-ed" when they mean a female college student. You can still hear it a lot on local TV news and radio news. I mean, is this 1952? Are female college students really that rare anymore? I think most colleges have more female than male students. Can you stop calling them co-eds already? Are our grandparents writing for news agencies????
Go to Google and search News for "coed" and you'll get tons of recent news stories about "coeds." C'mon, seriously?
1. reckon for suppose/ ie reckon I will call Joe
2. Kelvinator = refrigerator (old brand name)
3. heifer = a woman not approved of
4. rheumatism=arthritis
5. crick=creek
Oh and from an earlier post: there IS a product called snuff, in addition to chewing tobacco. It is a powder from of tobacco. Big cause of oral cancers...
Wow, this thread took off! I have to say that I still call my waste basket a... waste basket!
Not to derail this thread, but sometimes technology leaps ahead of verbiage. Example: When I take movies with my digital camera, what am I doing? I'm not video taping (although I call it "taking video"). I'm certainly not filming!
My mother caused me several moments of acute embarrassment when she asked me in front of my friends: "Oh, Sandy, how was Paris. Was it swell?" I'm sure that "swell" was used in the 50s much like "groovy" was used in the 70s, but auuughhh! I was 14 at the time; I wanted to disappear.
When I was a little girl, I remember the older generation would say "grand" when they meant "great" or "wonderful," as in "You're graduating? That's really grand" or "I had a grand time at the party."
When my grandfather wanted to express amazement, he would say, "Well, I declare!"
A lot of my older relatives would start a sentence with "why," as in "Why, I believe she moved away last year."
An elderly babysitter once scolded me for being "saucy" (impertinent).
"cunning" for cute; as in the little baby was so cunning.
"sundries" for odds and ends
"snuggies" for her cotton underware
a "tin" of tuna....instead of a can of tuna
"tin foil" instead of aluminum foil
"machine" for car
my father called a big porch.....the "piazza" and an entry-way....the "vestibule"
and I still call the garage "the barn".....I can't quite break myself of the habit.
Tia 914's point that some of these are regionalisms more than anachronistic terms may apply to "cunning" to mean "cute," which I too used to hear old ladies say when I was growing up in the Boston metro area, and which as far as I know was used mainly in New England. I'm pretty sure that "cunning" also fits as a dated term as well. When I was a kid, it was only old ladies I ever heard use the term, and I never hear anyone use it now, and haven't heard it for years.
I remember my grandparents using a number of the terms people have listed here, but below are a few that haven't been mentioned yet.
Trousers
"Go to," to mean to do something deliberately. Two kids are roughhousing, and one gets hurt. "Jimmy hurt me." "I know it hurts, but he didn't go to do it."
And another brand name used generically. My grandparents said "kodak" for camera.
My father used to call soda.... "TONIC" That is a regionalism from Maine and Northern New England. Moxie, which was the local favorite soft drink...and it was promoted for its health benefits. You still hear old timers call soda..."tonic". ("Can I get you a bottle of tonic?" of just "Would you like a tonic?")
"English Peas" were regular green sweet peas....I guess that distinguished them from dry field peas.
"try out" was a cooking term for mincing up some salt pork and frying it to get the fat in the pan. The crispy little ends of the fried pork were usually served on top of the chowder.
"vexed" was to be really "cross" or irritated.
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