Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Hercule]

Go play in traffic

go pound sand

 

[LizzieMaine]

go pound sand

...with a wet sneaker.

 

[skydog757]

Don't take any wooden nickels.

 

[Mr Oldschool]

Take a long walk off a short pier.

I had that on the last page.

Yes, I saw that one. It wasn't the one I was thinking of, but thanks. No there was another one that wasn't so well known as the "short pier" that I was trying to recall.

 

[bond_323]

go pound sand

I'm a cop, I hear this one every day! One of my favorite old terms is "prowl car" for a marked police cruiser.

 

[bond_323]

My dad was the king of old phrases that he seemingly pulled out of thin air. I did some searching after he passed and found that some of his phrase-ology goes back years and years. Some of my favorites-

"Tighter than Dick's hatband."
"Boy, lose the attitude or I'm gonna jerk a knot in your tail."
"It's raining harder than a cow pi$$ing on a flat rock!"

 

[tonyb]

"Hotter'n a two-dollar pistol," meaning something so obviously stolen it may as well carry documentation to that effect, which is quite distinct from "hotter'n a three-dollar (um, 'professional' woman)."

 

[Hercule]

When I was a kid we wore dungarees not jeans.

 

[dh66]

When I was a kid we wore dungarees not jeans.

Did you also wear chinos, not 'khakis'?

I once heard someone describing a fellow as having on a "nice looking pair of navy blue khaki pants". ???

 

[HudsonHawk]

My grandmother called modern underwear "step-ins". I guess this was opposed to the gown type of undergarment.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We called underpants "underpants." Not "panties." Not "briefs." Underpants.

Long winter underwear was called "drawers," prounced "draws." Hence the old joke, "Summer is over, winter draws on."

 

[Fading Fast]

We called underpants "underpants." Not "panties." Not "briefs." Underpants.

Long winter underwear was called "drawers," prounced "draws." Hence the old joke, "Summer is over, winter draws on."

You jarred my memory on that one - when, in the winter, I would stay with my grandmother as a little kid, she would tell me to get dressed, put on your "draws" referring to long underwear. I haven't thought about that term in, maybe, forty years, but now I can hear her saying it in my head like it was yesterday.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Slacks" is another word that's been turned into a generic term where it was once specifically descriptive. Slacks were originally loose, casual pants worn mostly by Bing Crosby, golfers, and women -- the idea of all non-denim pants being called "slacks" is a recent innovation. "A dressy pair of slacks" was an oxymoron -- slacks, by definition, were the opposite of "dress pants."

 

[Stearmen]

All I have to say to people on this thread is, "put a sock in it!"

 

[Stearmen]

Cut A Rug!

 

[LizzieMaine]

All I have to say to people on this thread is, "put a sock in it!"

Yahhh, go sit on a tack.

 

[skydog757]

They're selling like hotcakes!

 

[bond_323]

All these vintage terms are the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas!

 

[TimeWarpWife]

..."Boy, lose the attitude or I'm gonna jerk a knot in your tail."....

In a similar vein, "I'm gonna knock a knot on your head Ajax won't take off." Showing my age here, to this day I still say things are "neat" (for the younger folks, that's the equivalent of "cool").

"Sit on it" from Happy Days and "up your nose with a rubber hose" from Welcome Back Kotter were also quite popular in the 70s when I was in middle and high school.

And where I grew up in the south, people didn't have temper tantrums or conniptions, they had hissy fits. Which also reminds me of, "if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about." How many times did I hear that as a kid.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In a similar vein, "I'm gonna knock a knot on your head Ajax won't take off." And showing my age, to this day I still say things are "neat" (for the younger folks, that's the equivalent of "cool").

A friend in the '70s went away to boarding school and came back calling things he approved of "shag." If something was highly approved, it was "mega shag." If it was the ultima thule of approval, it was "mega shag to the max much."

He was given the cold shoulder for such pronouncments, and soon moved away in shame, never to be heard from again.