Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Fading Fast]

Just thought of this one last night when my girlfriend and I were discussing a kinda creepy neighbor and I said, before I realized it, that "he gives me the heebie jeebies." My Dad used that term all the time - and I seem to think I've heard it in old movies, radio shows or read it in books, but don't remember any specific examples. It, in the context he used it, meant someone or something that gave you the creeps / increase your anxiety because the person or thing is weird or odd. I haven't heard it used, I don't think, since he passed away.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just thought of this one last night when my girlfriend and I were discussing a kinda creepy neighbor and I said, before I realized it, that "he gives me the heebie jeebies." My Dad used that term all the time - and I seem to think I've heard it in old movies, radio shows or read it in books, but don't remember any specific examples. It, in the context he used it, meant someone or something that gave you the creeps / increase your anxiety because the person or thing is weird or odd. I haven't heard it used, I don't think, since he passed away.

That was a Googleism -- one of several slang phrases popularized in the "Barney Google" comic strip in the twenties.

 

[sheeplady]

There's problems with institutional knowledge being lost. It happens all the time. Relationships (and how to build them) can't be stored in data banks. Documentation has always been a problem for most organizations, NASA included. There are nuances- important nuances- that are never recorded because people aren't paid to do documentation in their everyday jobs. Once these people leave the organization these nuances leave with them. There are important nuances that were never recorded at NASA, because of the difficulty of recording these AND because this is just the way our societies and organization's work. Despite these nuances not being recorded, organizations still get the trains to run on time, products on the shelves, and can send people into space. The organizations simply waste time by having their people relearn the nuances. It is a question more of efficiency than effectiveness.

That said, our return to the moon has more to do with a nation's whose priorities are focused elsewhere than on science and knowledge. Ask any researcher what the past couple of years have been like trying to get any type of research funded- including vital health research. If we're not interested in funding basic research on things like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (the diseases that will likely account for the majority of our deaths) why would we ever have the interest in funding research on returning to the moon?

ETA: to make this post a bit more on topic- I frequently say "cool beans." I've been told by a couple of people now that they haven't heard that term in years. I don't know if it is falling out of favor. I probably use it 5 or 6 times a week.

 

[Fading Fast]

That was a Googleism -- one of several slang phrases popularized in the "Barney Google" comic strip in the twenties.

Thank you - was it a popular expression in its day?

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I'm sure Lizzie has more details, but it may have been the "Doh!" of it's day.
The Barney Google (later Barney Google and Snuffy Smith) were
"The Simpsons" of the dead tree medium in its day.

 

[Fading Fast]

There's problems with institutional knowledge being lost. It happens all the time. Relationships (and how to build them) can't be stored in data banks. Documentation has always been a problem for most organizations, NASA included. There are nuances- important nuances- that are never recorded because people aren't paid to do documentation in their everyday jobs. Once these people leave the organization these nuances leave with them. There are important nuances that were never recorded at NASA, because of the difficulty of recording these AND because this is just the way our societies and organization's work. Despite these nuances not being recorded, organizations still get the trains to run on time, products on the shelves, and can send people into space. The organizations simply waste time by having their people relearn the nuances. It is a question more of efficiency than effectiveness.

That said, our return to the moon has more to do with a nation's whose priorities are focused elsewhere than on science and knowledge. Ask any researcher what the past couple of years have been like trying to get any type of research funded- including vital health research. If we're not interested in funding basic research on things like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (the diseases that will likely account for the majority of our deaths) why would we ever have the interest in funding research on returning to the moon?

ETA: to make this post a bit more on topic- I frequently say "cool beans." I've been told by a couple of people now that they haven't heard that term in years. I don't know if it is falling out of favor. I probably use it 5 or 6 times a week.

To your point, I have seen in my field - finance - a loss of basic skills as sophistication, complication and computers all grew hand in hand. When I started in the early 1980s, there were a few computer screens and several "bond" calculators on the trading floor as you need the calculators to get the price and accrued interest accurate. But I was trained to do it by hand first (a combination of math and some conversion tables) that taught me the underlying math and logic to its core. I could "feel" how bond prices, rates, duration (a sensitivity measure) moved and played off each other in different bonds without using any aids.

As the business progressed, I adopted computers and, then, more sophisticated computers / programs / algorithms to my trading. I have now seen a young generation come in that is highly educated, but that can't do basic math without a computer. Also, they have a intensely mathematically view of bonds and finance, but to my view, lack a core understanding of how the guts of a, for example, portfolio of securities really works. They need a computer to tell them how it will perform as they don't "feel" it. There is no doubt that there are some very smart young people who don't fit this mold, but many do and it has given me an advantage in both speed of decision making and ability to respond quickly and accurately in meetings and client presentations.

And it is hilarious to watch the panic and terror set in the few times the computers go down. All that said, there is no great endgame as the future will be computer driven by computer-trained wiz kids, but for me, I have noticed the gap (as you pointed out about NASA) and have found that one can profit by taking advantage of that gap. Maybe this progression even makes sense as the small amount of knowledge lost is necessary because the human brain can only absorb so much and maybe the cutting edge requires discarding some of the old.

Most sailors can't navigate with a sextant, but maybe so what, they don't need to. I am not saying this is right or wrong (and if real knowledge is lost, then that is a problem), but maybe having an army of sailors trained to use a sextant in a satellite-navigation world or an army of portfolio managers spending time learning how to do hand calculations in a six-computer-screens-on-a-desk world is a waste of human effort. The knowledge is there in the people who build the programs and new tools (as the underlying fundamentals have to be incorporated into the new tools), but maybe it makes sense to only have a few people know that core stuff and let the rest of us work on the edge. Last example - I used to be able to fix my own car, but I can't now, but my car today (I don't really own one, but theoretically) is safer and more reliable than the earlier models (overall). If I can drive better and safer, does it matter that I can't work on it (and looking under the hood gives me a headache)?

I see the benefits of both and my instinct (which is wrong many times) is that something valuable is being lost, but when I think it through, I'm not sure as long as the knowledge is still there.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I see the benefits of both and my instinct (which is wrong many times) is that something valuable is being lost, but when I think it through, I'm not sure as long as the knowledge is still there.

One of the hallmarks of technology is that one need not understand a technology to be able to use it. You don't have to understand *how* an airplane flies in order to ride on one. That doesn't mean that the science of aerodynamics used to be common knowledge among the masses and it's now lost to humankind. Likewise, doing calculations on a slide rule doesn't impart some intrinsic knowledge that isn't there when using a calculator. Neither are particularly relevant to the concepts of math, they are just tools to describe them.

 

[vitanola]

I'm sure Lizzie has more details, but it may have been the "Doh!" of it's day.
The Barney Google (later Barney Google and Snuffy Smith) were
"The Simpsons" of the dead tree medium in its day.

The expression quickly entered the popular lexicon. Within a year Louis Armstrong wrote a song featuring the term:
[video=youtube;ksmGt2U-xTE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksmGt2U-xTE&feature=youtube_gdata_player [/video]

 

[vitanola]

In 1932 the Boswell Sisters really had the Heebie Jeebies:

[video=youtube;mWwLfTjyD_A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWwLfTjyD_A&feature=youtube_gdata_player [/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Barney Google" was all over popular culture in the twenties and thirties. Among the terms it popularized were "Sweet woman," "Balls o' fire," "shif'less skonk," "yardbird," and its most enduring contribution, "bodacious," which was an actual bit of Appalachian hillbilly slang dating back to the 19th Century which Billy DeBeck rediscovered when doing research on mountain dialect in the early thirties.

Snuffy Smith is Barney Google's cousin, and still headlines the strip. Barney himself returned for the first time in decades a couple of years back, but they missed the boat by not explaining his absence by saying he'd been busy becoming an Internet billionaire.

 

[Matt Crunk]

A term you used to hear used in old Noir and crime films was gunsel. It was usually used (incorrectly) as a slang term for a gunman or hired gun, but actually originated as a term for a young homosexual or kept male lover. Apparently Bogey used it first in The Maltese Falcon, and production code censors, being unfamiliar with the term's true meaning, let it pass, thinking due to the context that he was using a slang word for a hired gun. Then other screenwriters followed suit and began to use the word in the same context, meaning "gunman" all without knowing the true origin. Or maybe they did and it was an inside joke. Who knows?

 

[Stanley Doble]

I use the term heebie jeebies all the time. The best definition was supplied by Isaac Asimov in a detective novel.

Do you ever feel like something awful is going to happen but you don't know what? You've got the heebie jeebies.

 

[Stanley Doble]

"gun mob" = team of pickpockets, "gun moll" = female shoplifter. From the yiddish "goniff" or thief. Nothing to do with guns.

(to bartender) Slip a bromo in my coke Eddie. I'm picking up a cannon mob at the Ambassador in half an hour.
- S.J. Perelman

 

[skydog757]

I used to hear the term "I feel like a goose just walked over my grave!" whenever someone had a sudden chill or bad premonition.

 

[MissMittens]

Goose? Wow, that's the first time I've ever encountered that

 

[Zombie_61]

Same here. I've always heard it as, "I feel like a ghost just walked over my grave." I've always thought it a bit odd that a living person would comment about their grave in that manner; perhaps projecting into their own future?

 

[sheeplady]

Same here. I've always heard it as, "I feel like a ghost just walked over my grave." I've always thought it a bit odd that a living person would comment about their grave in that manner; perhaps projecting into their own future?

I think it refers to a another person walking over where the person saying it will be buried in the future. As in, some stranger is walking over the plot where the speaker will someday be buried in the future.

I've heard it as "ghost" and "someone/ somebody."

 

[fashion frank]

Same here. I've always heard it as, "I feel like a ghost just walked over my grave." I've always thought it a bit odd that a living person would comment about their grave in that manner; perhaps projecting into their own future?

How about "whistling past the graveyard " I use it but dont hear it used much anymore.
All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[hatguy1]

Groovy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Haversack]

The shift in the meaning of 'gunsel' from 'catamite' to 'hired' gun is directly attributable to Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon. The editor of the pulp magazine in which the Falcon was first serialized was opposed to vulgar language. This irked Hammett. In submitting the Falcon, he included some underworld slang that sounded dirty but which was actually innocent, (e.g. Gooseberry Lay - stealing clothes off a clothesline), as a stalking horse in the expectation that the editor would remove it while overlooking gunsel. The ploy worked. Gunsel's new definition is still current while its original meaning is all but forgotten. For example, several online synopses of the HBO series, Deadwood, refer to the Earps as gunsels...