Terms Which Have Disappeared

[BlueTrain]

Dick Tracy had something of a plot crisis when Moonmaid entered the picture, if I remember correctly. I still enjoy Dagwood and Blondie the best, probably because I identify with him or something. But there are others I enjoy just as much.

We had a yard, too, and it was my job to cut the grass. Still is, as a matter of fact. But for some embarrassing reason, it now feels wrong to say "yard." So I say "lawn" instead. I probably got too much education for my own good. But we don't call anything a stoop. The house I grew up in didn't have a basement but there was enough enclosed space for storage of garden implements, maybe six feet high, nothing excavated, that was referred to as "under the house." We also had outbuildings (this was in town), one of which was referred to as a barn, but it wasn't. It had a loft, a partial wooden floor and an open covered area in the front. They used to keep chickens and a cow but it was really just a shed.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I did know someone who had a Florida room and a side porch but I never heard it referred to, so I don't know what it might have properly been called.

"Florida room" is the proper term. It's an enclosed room that is attached, but separate from the rest of the house. It's not heated or cooled (of course back in my day in Florida, neither was the rest of the house). It's what some might call a "sun porch"

 

[BlueTrain]

I'm not sure I ever heard the word veranda when I was little and I doubt that anyone I knew would have used the term. It sounds too Southern for where I grew up.

 

[HudsonHawk]

We had a yard, too, and it was my job to cut the grass. Still is, as a matter of fact. But for some embarrassing reason, it now feels wrong to say "yard." So I say "lawn" instead.

We never called it a "lawn", and to this day we don't "mow the lawn", we "cut the grass". With a "lawnmower". So how's that for contradictions.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'm not sure I ever heard the word veranda when I was little and I doubt that anyone I knew would have used the term. It sounds too Southern for where I grew up.

"Verandas" typically wrapped around the house, or at least went the length of the house in the front. A "porch" was a much smaller open space. One might have a small "porch" out the back with a "veranda" out front.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Veranda is a term that brings to mind the image of Irvin S. Cobb sitting around in a seersucker suit, sipping mint juleps. It's also a term I've heard used to refer to the wide midsection that sometimes develops on gentlemen who spend too much time sitting around in seersucker suits, sipping mint juleps.

 

[BlueTrain]

English can be a funny language. We park in the driveway and drive on the parkway. We didn't when I was little but we do now.

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Veranda" is very good, but "Terrasse" is always welcome, around here.

 

[HudsonHawk]

A "terrace" is a raised platform or surface. A "veranda" is always at ground level or at least level with the first floor of the building. You have to climb to a terrace, but you always walk directly out on to a veranda.

Also, a veranda is always covered, a terrace is never covered.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Where I live a porch is a "portal,"with emphasis on the second syllable.

 

[greatestescaper]

For a while growing up we lived in coop apartments, and we had a front stoop, but not a back stoop. For that matter we did not even have a back door or back yard.

My grandfather always refers to any area, covered or otherwise, as "the veranda", provided the area has seating and he is permitted to smoke his cigars. And once he's laid claim to a veranda, regardless of whether there is rain, shine, sleet, or snow he will be found out there smoking.

One of my favorite colloquialisms, which I reckon is fading, is "useful as a turtle on a fencepost."

 

[EngProf]

"Moom pitcha" is the proper pronunciation for a moving-picture show.

"Underpants" is the term for the garment worn under one's regular clothing, whether by men or women. The cut of the garment is irrelevant to the name.

"Britches" are regular pants, usually only used jocularly, in such phrases as "Pull up ya britches!"

Whoever it was who started saying "pant" instead of "pants" should be placed up against the wall and shot.

"Bathing suit" is the garment you wear in the water, whether male or female.

"The funnies" is the comic section of the newspaper.

"The rotogravure" is the full-color slickish-paper weekend newspaper supplement -- "Family Weekly," "Parade," or whatever other one your paper carries.

"Victrola" is the mechanism upon which you play records, regardless of its age or make.

"Piazza" is the front porch of any house. After supper you "set on the piazza" -- not "sit," "set" -- and listen to The Ball Game.

"Supper" is the meal you eat in the evening. "Dinner" is the meal you eat at noon.

The air raid siren that blows at 11:30 every morning on the roof of the town office is "the Dinner Whistle."

"Sub-primary" is school for five year olds, and comes before the first grade.

If I had heard someone say "Moom Picha" (and I guarantee you that I never did) I would have possibly associated it with a city in India or perhaps Peru (Machu Picchu).
We always had lunch at ~noon, going all the way back to "Lunch with Soupy Sales", when I was in kindergarten (pronounced "kindergarden".) Not "sub-primary"...
"Piazza": what someone with a slight speech problem might call one of those round things with pepperoni and onions on top...
You Yankees sure do talk funny...

 

[BlueTrain]

To an European, a Yankee is an American.
To an American, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To a Northerner, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To an Easterner, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To a New Englander, a Yankee a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast.

In the U.K., they eat beans for breakfast.

 

[kaiser]

Macy's and Gimbels were competing NYC department stores back in the first half of the 20th Century (and up to the '80s) that were just a couple of blocks away from each other. They were highly competitive always trying to beat the other for product or price as they had a similar customer demographic.

The expression "Does Macy's Tell Gimbels" is a shorthand for saying that competitors don't share information. So, if you were working for a paper company and ran into a salesman from another firm and he asked if your firm was going to open a store somewhere or cut your price or add a product, you could answer him by saying "does Macy's tell Gimbals" meaning, I won't give that information to a competitor.

It was a very, very commonly used expression, as noted, up until about the '80s when, not coincidently, Gimbels closed and the expression has been fading from use since.

Thanks Fading Fast, I would not have expect that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If I had heard someone say "Moom Picha" (and I guarantee you that I never did) I would have possibly associated it with a city in India or perhaps Peru (Machu Picchu).
We always had lunch at ~noon, going all the way back to "Lunch with Soupy Sales", when I was in kindergarten (pronounced "kindergarden".) Not "sub-primary"...
"Piazza": what someone with a slight speech problem might call one of those round things with pepperoni and onions on top...
You Yankees sure do talk funny...

Hey, we ain't the ones wi' funny accents. That's youse people.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I guess terms like "porch" and "veranda" are used interchangeably nowadays to refer to any covered area off the front or back of the house. Or perhaps it's regional. In the South, the distinguishing characteristics of a "veranda" are that it extends the length of the house, and most importantly it's the same level as the interior first floor. Think of it as an extension of the house, livable space, just outside the exterior wall.

Another term I used to hear a lot in Florida was "lanai", which is a Hawaiian term referring to basically an outdoor room. We used it to refer to space that was treated just like the living room. You had furniture, lights, ceiling fans, TV, what have you. It just didn't have four walls. I have one on my house now. I call it the lanai. My wife (native Texan) calls it the "patio". Don't get me started on that term...

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In Texas when I lived there as a boy, many houses had a "screen porch." This was exactly what it sounds like, a roofed porch surrounded by window screening. Few homes had AC, and we slept on the screen porch on warm summer nights. There is no better sleeping than on a screen porch when it's raining.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Interesting not so much that you do that but rather that you realize you do it. I think it's a very common thing. You do not naturally speak the same way everywhere or to everyone. You modify both your speech and your vocabulary to suit the audience and the circumstances and they all change over time.

There are words and expressions that have changed with the technology. We used to have typing in school and before that, typewriting. Now they teach keyboarding. We used to say icebox at home but then, we actually had an icebox. Then we got a Kelvinator and that the word that was used as often as refrigerator.

Boxer shorts for men were sometimes called "trunks" and I still say swimming trunks, even though I don't have any. I don't remember if anyone said "moving picture show" instead of the movies but nobody said "film." A funny thing about English, probably true in other languages, is how "pants" is plural, I guess, although sometimes you see the word "pant" in advertising. It sounds a little forced, though. Same with trunks, as in swimming trunks, or trousers, as in a pair of. You might say breeches (or britches) but nobody would say breech or britch. They wouldn't, would they?

"Pant"! A pant is a short, sharp inhale and exhale. I get any number of catalogues in the mail where the copy writers try to sell me a "pant". Unless it's a pair, I'm not buying!

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Veranda is a term that brings to mind the image of Irvin S. Cobb sitting around in a seersucker suit, sipping mint juleps. It's also a term I've heard used to refer to the wide midsection that sometimes develops on gentlemen who spend too much time sitting around in seersucker suits, sipping mint juleps.

That anatomical (or is it morphological?) feature was "a bay window" in my father's vocabulary.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

English can be a funny language. We park in the driveway and drive on the parkway. We didn't when I was little but we do now.

George Carlin has/had that pairing in a bit with lots of other seemingly contradictory pairings.