20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback

[MikeBravo]

I miss the old days when one could go out "galavanting". Interchangeable with "dancing and prancing"

 

[AtomicEraTom]

When I was in High School and living at home, My mother would say after I came home late, "Why do you always have to be out Galavanting until all hours?!"

 

[scottyrocks]

I miss the old days when one could go out "galavanting". Interchangeable with "dancing and prancing"

You can still do that, ya know.

 

[Gumbo Book]

Some of these phrases are still used - where I live

Gumbo.

 

[Gumbo Book]

I regulary "Cut a Dash" when roaming around town, where some folks are "indefatigable" with their style!! Hah!

 

[LittleMissPussyCat]

I was brought up in that generation by those who had been through the 30's and 40's and world war, Depression..etc, and they as kids had been influenced by their Victorian and Edwardian parents and relations, so I guess, I'm the last of that generation to have been directly influenced in their language and codes of behaviour.

Words that were commonly used in our household (yep, it was a household, we had a pantry, living room, drawing room, breakfast room..etc), and which I still come out with when not thinking...

Balderdash; baloney; Poppycock; Blaggard; Guttersnipe; Chum; Piffal; the flicks; okey doke; toodleloo; cheerio; hoover; a gas; ...

Those words are still in use in our household.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Every so often, my parents & their friends go out on a cavorting expedition.

 

[scotrace]

Stop that quagswagging you bloody jollux hoddypeak! I'm making time with this illecebrous and freckish yummybundle!

 

[scottyrocks]

Stop that quagswagging you bloody jollux hoddypeak! I'm making time with this illecebrous and freckish yummybundle!

My sentiments exactly!

 

[LordBest]

I think poodlefaker ("A young man too much given to tea parties and ladies' society generally (often for social advancement)", not the illicit and highly rephrensible act of counterfeiting small and annoying dogs) could do with revival.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or, as we called them in the States, a "cake-eater."

 

[LordBest]

I prefer poodlefaker, myself. One can engage in the act of act of cake consumption without being a poodlefaker, but I think it would be dashed difficult to practise poodlefakery without being a poodlefaker.

 

[p71towny]

The word NO. I think that's why there's so many back injuries in today's world. Easier to hurt your spine when its weak.

 

[Talbot]

I prefer poodlefaker, myself. One can engage in the act of act of cake consumption without being a poodlefaker, but I think it would be dashed difficult to practise poodlefakery without being a poodlefaker.

'Milksop' seems to roll off the tongue better to me.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I'm making time with this illecebrous and freckish yummybundle!

Sound like you are having more fun than should be legal!

 

[Fletch]

'Milksop' seems to roll off the tongue better to me.

Drugstore cowboy.

 

[gpsoldhat]

A helot is an agrarian slave of Sparta. They were an undercaste, okay to brutalize and even kill ritually, but necessary for the survival of the state. (I guess one step down would be someone unnecessary, ie: a good-for-nothing bum.)

Walter Brennan used helot quite a few times in the golden age movie Meet John Doe. Starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Good fedoras in that one

 

[MissMittens]

Popycock, fiddlesticks, twist (as in, your girl), snipe (cigarette)

 

[Effingham]

I miss the old classic, "blackguard."

 

[latinmajorac]

I use swell commonly nowadays. as well as gal, don't hear that one all the time