Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Zombie_61]

Just reading through this thread for the first time, so please pardon me if someone has pointed this out later. I've been a volunteer fire fighter for almost 20 years now. Many years ago I took a water supply class and was told that the term fire plug came from the days when water pipes were actually made of wood. To provide access for fire fighting holes were drilled periodically and sealed with a wooden plug. This might even be true.

Yes, it's true, which makes the term "fire plug" not quite accurate when applied to a fire hydrant since they serve very different functions.

 

[scottyrocks]

I am amazed at how many of these lost terms I still use.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Here's another one, "torch singer".

 

[GHT]

And "thingamajig" or the variant "thingamabob". I hear more "whatsis" these days.

OH! and another fast-disappearing word! When I am asked what I would like at a counter service establishment, I generally say, "I'll have a ....." Now, anyone under 30 seems to say, "I'll do a ... ." "Have" isn't used this way now.

I can remember watching a news report from America at the time that Saddam Hussein was taken into custody. The interviewee simply said:
"We got him." Not, we have caught him. English being such a flexible language, makes: We got him, comprehensible, but as you so rightly say. Have is the verb, or part of the past tense of a second verb.

In my own youth, the verb "do", in this sense, was a new locution for ingesting controlled substances, without a prescription.

So do wasn't something a dog did causing you to say, when you stepped in it: "Sh*t! I just trod in some doggy-do!"

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

So do wasn't something a dog did causing you to say, when you stepped in it: "Sh*t! I just trod in some doggy-do!"

Ahh, no. Before I was old enough to feel comfortable using the word with the asterisk, the noun we used was "dirt". But of course, "do", as you used it, is a noun, not a verb.

 

[Tomasso]

I think the "do/does" thing began with a popular 'art' film where the lead actress 'does' a city in Texas.

 

[GHT]

I think the "do/does" thing began with a popular 'art' film where the lead actress 'does' a city in Texas.

:rofl:
On a flight from london to Nashville, we had to change planes at that city where Debbie Did whatever she did. I think she might have been doing something unspeakable in the ladies restroom at the airport. My wife came out almost buckled with laughter. It turned out that whilst my wife, and another lady, were preening themselves in the mirror, an almighty earthquake of a fart emanated from one of the traps. It wasn't the fart that made my wife laugh, it was the reaction of the other woman: "My Gaad!" she shrieked, looking under the door as if to see who or what had caused it.

 

[dh66]

I think the "do/does" thing began with a popular 'art' film where the lead actress 'does' a city in Texas.

She only "did" the football team.

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[jamespowers]

She only "did" the football team.

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And how do you know this?

 

[dh66]

And how do you know this?

I studied art in college

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[GHT]

And how do you know this?

:rofl:

 

[jamespowers]

I studied art in college

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I see. In Dallas?

 

[dh66]

I see. In Dallas?

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[tonyb]

...

OH! and another fast-disappearing word! When I am asked what I would like at a counter service establishment, I generally say, "I'll have a ....." Now, anyone under 30 seems to say, "I'll do a ... ." "Have" isn't used this way now. ...

And then there's the all but extinct use of "take," in reference to newspaper and magazine subscriptions. You know, a person would "take" the morning Post-Intelligencer or the evening Times. And some avid readers might be heard saying "I take 'em both."

That usage was falling away even before the Great Newspaper Implosion we've witnessed over the past several years. The folks I recall using it have themselves gone the way of so many of those newspapers.

 

[GHT]

Courting, when I met my wife (to be,) I courted her, wooed her. Bought her flowers, gave her compliments. It might have been due to the raging hormones coursing through me, but I still knew how to behave with decorum.
In my day, you met the lady, courted her, married her, lived together, then had kids. How quaint is that?

 

[Zombie_61]

I studied art in college

I studied art too, but I didn't need a college to do it. shhhhhhhh

 

[Gregg Axley]

I see. In Dallas?

:eusa_clap

 

[Tomasso]

Courting, when I met my wife (to be,) I courted her, wooed her. Bought her flowers, gave her compliments.

AKA 'pitching woo', another lost term.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And then there's the all but extinct use of "take," in reference to newspaper and magazine subscriptions. You know, a person would "take" the morning Post-Intelligencer or the evening Times. And some avid readers might be heard saying "I take 'em both."

The t-shirt factory I worked in years ago used "take a paper" in a very different way. In screen printing, the screens will after long runs become clogged with ink -- and it's necessary from time to time to clear them by printing on a sheet of newsprint. So when an image began to look blurry, the quality control monitor at the end of the line would yell "Take a paper!" which also became factory slang for "Ahhh, shaddup." To this day, if someone is going on too long, I'll mutter, "take a paper, willya?"

 

[Tomasso]

The folks I recall using it have themselves gone the way of so many of those newspapers.

Ah yes, the big receivership in the sky.