Terms Which Have Disappeared

[tonyb]

...

I think FL members are not representative of the population at large.

Depends on which forum(s) you visit. The overall membership is almost undoubtedly better versed in the popular culture of the first half of the 20th century than is the population at large. But all of us are living in 2017, like it or not, and all of us speak in dialects that didn't exist in quite the same forms 60-plus years ago.

Some of my working lexicon might be growing archaic, but there is little affected in it. "Gussied up" is THE right phrase in certain contexts. I suspect that people unfamiliar with it -- younger people, presumably, and those from other lands -- would deduce its meaning from those contexts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I suspect forum users in general are not representative of the population. None of the kids I know partake of "fora," it's considered somthing for moldy old fuddy-duddies (or whatever the modern term is). The action for them is on Twitter and Tumblr.

 

[Fading Fast]

Depends on which forum(s) you visit. The overall membership is almost undoubtedly better versed in the popular culture of the first half of the 20th century than is the population at large. But all of us are living in 2017, like it or not, and all of us speak in dialects that didn't exist in quite the same forms 60-plus years ago.

Some of my working lexicon might be growing archaic, but there is little affected in it. "Gussied up" is THE right phrase in certain contexts. I suspect that people unfamiliar with it -- younger people, presumably, and those from other lands -- would deduce its meaning from those contexts.

It's funny, if you ask me to come up with terms for this thread, I become like Ralph Kramden - homina, homina. The way I "come up" with terms is when they just spit out of my conversation - like today's "gussied up" came from something I wrote in the "Old Gas Station" thread.

 

[Haversack]

I grew up with a copy of The Best of H. T. Webster in the house, (along with books of Out Our Way and The Bull of the Woods cartoons by J.R. Williams). As Lizzie said, they were pleasant and nostalgic and mostly inoffensive. Some poked mild fun at stuffed shirts and authority and evoked pathos. On of his Life's Darkest Moments depicted an Admiral walking proudly through the concourse of a big train station and a woman with a lot of luggage calling after him, "Oh, Porter!" Another was a winter scene showing a boy on a snowy hillside watching a game of ice hockey being played by a group of other kids on a frozen pond. The boy has only one leg and a crutch. The caption read, "The Boy Who Flipped Trains".

 

[tonyb]

... The action for them is on Twitter and Tumblr.

This week, anyway.

 

[Zombie_61]

What's always bothered me about "Blondie" is that Dagwood and Blondie's chairs in the living room face away from each other, so that they never look at each other while they're talking. Maybe that's how they've stayed married for eighty-four years.

One night not long after my wife and I were married we climbed into bed, said "Good night" to each other, and rolled onto our sides to sleep, essentially laying back-to-back. After a few moments my wife said, "You know, if we switched sides (of the bed) we'd be facing each other instead of facing away from each other." Yeah, we were young. So we got up, spent 5-10 minutes moving our respective odds and ends from one nightstand to the other, got back into bed, said "Good night" again, and immediately rolled onto our sides facing away from each other. For anyone who hasn't already guessed, we got up and switched everything back, then went to bed. I can't say it's the reason we're still together after 35 years, but I can say it's easier to sleep when you're not inhaling someone else's carbon dioxide no matter how much you love them.

 

[Stearmen]

Since air-conditioning done went and got invented, nobody sits on their porch like that anymore.

In the old parts of our city most people sit out on the porch during the warm months. Porches are making a comeback around here!

 

[Stearmen]

Sunday go to meeting clothes.

 

[BlueTrain]

"All gussied up" sounds like an expression applied to someone, probably female, who rarely gets very dressed up very often. There was the term "putting on the Ritz" from some Fred Astaire movie that sounds like the same thing but I doubt it was really ever commonly used by those who actually did. Then there is the expression "dressed to kill," which sounds a little strange.

Referring to our obsolete expressions from years gone by, sometimes even from before our time, I know that recent arrivals in this country that I've worked with usually don't know the older terms, which is hardly a surprise. But they will use more recent, current expressions that haven't entered my own vocabulary yet (and which I doubt ever will). It is almost like language can be learned in two ways: vertically, meaning a language as used over time, as well as horizontally, learning more than one language, dialect and accent in use in the present. The first is a little bit traditional and a little bit nostalgia but the second is just harder, if considerably more useful and practical. Of course, you learn everything you are exposed to, unless you have something against learning.

I mentioned somewhere else months ago that while people may not sit on their front porches and indeed, most new houses don't have front porches, people certainly have decks that get considerable use. They do where I live, at least. In the house where I grew up, there was a front porch with the obligatory swing and a kind of metal porch furniture that we called a "glider." But we had a big back porch, too. There were four doors in the back of the house that opened onto the back porch. That was where the washing machine was kept between washdays and, when we still had one, that's where the icebox was. When we got the Kelvinator, the icebox was merely moved to a shed behind the house, just in case, I imagine.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Does anyone ever take Shank's Mare anymore?

My father (born in 1915) would advise me to ride it sometimes when, as a boy, I asked him to drive me to somewhere in walking distance.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I've heard of, "French Letters," but those were actually precursors.

I always thought of that as "chiefly British", as the dictionaries phrase it. This especially in light of a French immigrant friend once telling me that the French phrase translates as "English Raincoats".

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I recently read the obit of the woman who taught the "business" curriculum in my high school. That meant she taught bookkeeping, typing, shorthand writing, etc. That brought to mind Gregg-ruled note pads, stenotype machines, and other things that wouldn't likely mean anything to someone 50 years old or younger.

 

[BlueTrain]

I don't recall when I learned about condoms but it wasn't when I was still in public school.

I don't know if shorthand is taught or not but bookkeeping should still be. I am an accountant and when I first began working in accounting out of college, "the books" were indeed books. Records were maintained on wide multi-column sheets. Wouldn't go back to doing it that way for anything. Yet even then lots of machines were in use, mostly (in our case) as pricing and billing equipment. After all, IBM was founded in 1911, and National Cash Register in 1884. Do you remember ever seeing a cash register in a little store with a little box on the side where they put the sales tax that was collected?

Typewriters are scarce now, however. Typing is still taught, of course, and it has become an essential skill, but it's just called keyboarding.

I wonder if they teach keyboarding using just thumbs?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The most popular slang terms for formal evening clothes in the 1920s and 1930s were "glad rags" and "soup and fish." A tuxedo was commonly known as a "monkey suit."

 

[ChiTownScion]

The most popular slang terms for formal evening clothes in the 1920s and 1930s were "glad rags" and "soup and fish." A tuxedo was commonly known as a "monkey suit."

White tie and tails (full formal) are called a "soup and fish" because you usually are served many courses (including those) at a high class banquet when such dress is worn. It's a very proscribed form of dress... only used on rare occasions and quite often gotten wrong by those who attempt it. For example: the only proper shoes for a man wearing are opera pumps, slipper like affairs with a black bow. White pique waist coat. The white tie itself should be pique. The shirt is also pique, and only a wing tip collar will do- preferably a detachable collar. And if you need a hat: nothing less than a topper will suffice. (below)

The tuxedo ("black tie") was actually a democratic (small "d") development. It enabled the average Joe to dress up a bit and do the town with his lady, without the expense of full formal. (Think Sean Connery as James Bond-- as opposed to Fred Astaire.) Black tie is technically semi- formal: what most regard now as "semi- formal" is actually "business attire."

If you cross the ocean on Cunard these days they still have a dedicated "formal night" or two, but it's now black tie: white tie hasn't been worn on ships since before the Second World War. On some of the cattle boat cruises they have an "elegant night" where an optional clip- on necktie and polyester vest are considered "elegant."

One more point: neither a tailcoat nor a tux should ever be worn before six PM. That's why the good Lord invented morning wear: cutaway coat, ascot tie and striped trousers for full, and a stroller coat for semi.

 

[BlueTrain]

A business suit is "informal"--but not casual. It's the most we Socialists would dare wear.

 

[tonyb]

I'd rather see the gents in a wedding party in well-fitting business attire of at least middling quality than ill-fitting cheap rental tuxedos.

 

[BlueTrain]

We've been to two weddings last year and they aren't cheap to rent. But I was just thinking that the expressions "everything from soup to nuts" comes from a formal dinner when the first course is soup and the last, I guess, is nuts, served on a bare table, we assume. That's what I understand, though. Never been to one, although I once got invited to a fancy coffee, which is like a fancy tea, except that it's in the morning. I knew people there but I still felt out of place. But I also went to a formal dance at the very same place and was in my element. That was a while ago, though. I haven't been in my element for years now.

 

[vitanola]

There was the term "putting on the Ritz" from some Fred Astaire movie that sounds like the same thing but I doubt it was really ever commonly used by those who actually did. Then there is the expression "dressed to kill," which sounds a little strange.

Astaire? Hmmph!

Astaire got to the song (and expression) T

 

[vitanola]

There was the term "putting on the Ritz" from some Fred Astaire movie that sounds like the same thing but I doubt it was really ever commonly used by those who actually did.

Well, Astaire got to the expression and song twenty years late. The original lyric did not describe the sartorial habits of the Four Hundred, but rather it described Maid's Night Out, which was traditionally Thursday. The original setting was Harlem's Lenox Avenue, rather than Park Avenue. The "Spangled Gowns" were "all misfits".

Have you seen the "Well-to-do"
Up on Lenox Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare
With their noses in the air!
High hats, and colored collars.
White spats and fifteen dollars. ($15.00 was the common weekly wage for live-in help)
Spending every dime for a wonderful time

If you're blue and you don't know where to go to
Why don't you go where Harlem sits
Puttin' on the Ritz!
Spangled gowns upon a bevy of high browns from down the levee
All misfits
Puttin' on the Ritz!
That's where each and every Lulu Belle goes.
Every Thursday evening with her "Swell" beaux (rubbing elbows)
Come with me and we'll attend their jubilee
and see them spend their last two bits
Puttin' on the Ritz!