Terms Which Have Disappeared

[TimeWarpWife]

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.

Thanks to the Austin Powers movies, "shag" has a whole other connotation now. My British aunt tells a story of the strange look she got when she asked one of my uncle's (her husband) male friends, "What time shall we come round to knock you up?" Again, a whole other meaning here in the States.

 

[tonyb]

Yeah, you gotta be on guard. Among the younger people these days, "hooking up" with someone doesn't mean meeting at the coffee shop. It was fairly recently that I suggested to an old friend that we "hook up next week." She has known me long enough (30 years or so) and is of sufficient seniority to know I wasn't expecting or even so much as suggesting we get horizontal, but I did remind myself that another person might think me terribly presumptuous.

 

[tonyb]

In my dictionary, "shag" means covering territory. "Shagging flies" at baseball practice, for instance, or "taking a shag" to the specialty hardware store on the other side of town.

 

[Stearmen]

Yahhh, go sit on a tack.

 

[Stearmen]

Bad has made a come back. Bad as in Good! "That 69 Boss 302 is Bad."

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

"if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about." How many times did I hear that as a kid.

I remember a small boy in the late '50s and very early 60's being made such an offer on many occasions in southwestern Pennsylvania. It usually involved some toy or other that he had spotted in a store and developed an unreasonable desire to own.

 

[dh66]

Bad has made a come back. Bad as in Good! "That 69 Boss 302 is Bad."

For some reason this reminded me of another flip-flop meaning word in use these days. A lot of younger guys use dog (more precisely, dawg) to refer to each other these days, and I've met more than a few older cats who take offense to it. Seems back in the day, if a cat was behaving bad, like chasing someone else's bird for example, he was a dog, but now if you're a dawg it's a good thing.

 

[Fading Fast]

For some reason this reminded me of another flip-flop meaning word in use these days. A lot of younger guys use dog (more precisely, dawg) to refer to each other these days, and I've met more than a few older cats who take offense to it. Seems back in the day, if a cat was behaving bad, like chasing someone else's bird for example, he was a dog, but now if you're a dawg it's a good thing.

This made me think of one word that never seems to go out of style or change its meaning or connotation. "Cool" seems to be forever cool - a compliment, a reflection of calm under pressure, a reflection of good, quiet style, an ability to deal with the world with calmness and composure. I'm sure there's been some shifting in shades of meaning, but in my 40 or so years, it seems to have always been a popular and positive word.

 

[LizzieMaine]

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.

My mother used to threaten to sell us to the baby oil factory. That settled us down pretty quick.

 

[Stearmen]

I remember a small boy in the late '50s and very early 60's being made such an offer on many occasions in southwestern Pennsylvania. It usually involved some toy or other that he had spotted in a store and developed an unreasonable desire to own.

Don't make me pull this car over!

 

[Zombie_61]

For some reason this reminded me of another flip-flop meaning word in use these days. A lot of younger guys use dog (more precisely, dawg) to refer to each other these days, and I've met more than a few older cats who take offense to it. Seems back in the day, if a cat was behaving bad, like chasing someone else's bird for example, he was a dog, but now if you're a dawg it's a good thing.

Sure, unless you're one of the birds being dawg'd. lol

My mother used to threaten to sell us to the baby oil factory. That settled us down pretty quick.

When I was growing up the threat was, "We're going to send you to military school." I didn't even know what that meant or what "military school" was, but I'd seen the footage of the war in Vietnam on the evening news and knew I wanted nothing to do with anything associated with the word "military", so it worked.

 

[dh66]

Sure, unless you're one of the birds being dawg'd. lol

You're right about that, cat!

Interestingly, according to Tom Dalzell, in the book 'Flappers to Rappers', at the turn of the last century if a bird was "dogged", she was dressed to the nines. Apparently " dog" or "dogging" meant wearing your best clothes.
A cat could get all dogged, too, but I imagine if he were doing it to impress someone else's bird, he'd still end up in the doghouse.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was growing up the threat was, "We're going to send you to military school."

In our household, the equivalent of that was "I'm gonna send you kids to Sweetser," which was a prominent local orphanage. I imagined it in Dickensian terms, but it's actually quite a nice place.

 

[Fading Fast]

With our much more sensative approach to raising children today, I wonder if threats like that are used or even allowed (would / could you be reported to child services)?

 

[rjb1]

We had a local version of "Sweetser" here. Adults would threaten to send you to "Jordonia", which sounds like a made-up country in a Marx Brothers movie, but was the local "reform school". We had never seen the place and could not have found it on a map, but we knew we didn't want to go there. It was the "nuclear option" in terms of adult threats.

Has the term "reform-school" itself disappeared? Now it sounds like something out of a "Bowery Boys" movie.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

"Putting on the dog", there's a term "that's got legs".

 

[p51]

The threat of military school would have been met with laughs when i was a kid. I didn't know anyone growing up who's parents had the means to send them anywhere but public school.

Don't make me pull this car over!

A guy I went to elementary school with was one of those kids who never understood boundries and when yo keep his trap shut. I grew up in North Florida, and Disneyworld was a long drive for us. Well, his parents decided to take him and his sister there (they normally never took the kids anywhere). So somewhere down near Ocala, the kids started acting up. His Dad, who was a grumpy SOB who drank too much, did the 'don't make me pull this car over' thing and then eventually it got ugly. He declared if they did ONE MORE thing to tick him off, he'd turn the car around and that'd be that.
Mike, never knowing when to keep his mouth shut, said, "You'll never do that, having driven this far..."
He later told the story that his Dad slowed down at the first turnaround on the highway, turned around, and headed home without ever saying a word. I asked Mike later when he realized his Dad was serious, and he said it took over an hour to realize that the vacation was over and that he'd never see Disneyworld as a child.
I lost track of Mike in my late teens. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he was living in a trailer somehwere. The apple never falls far from the tree with redneck families like that. I'd also bet he never made it to Disneyworld either.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother once drove off and left me in the appliance department of W. T. Grant's because I wouldn't come away from watching the display TV sets. I was about eight years old and she made me run after the car for almost a full mile before she pulled over and let me in. After that when she said it was time to leave, I didn't lollygag.

"Lollygag," incidentially, is a term you don't hear much anymore.

 

[ChiTownScion]

When I was growing up the threat was, "We're going to send you to military school."

I begged....BEGGED..... my parents to ship me off to a military school. It sounded exciting to me: wearing uniforms, marching in formation, etc. And being sent away from home sounded like an adventure, not a threat. (Maybe I thought that they'd let us target practice with .50 cal machine guns too...I don't know. But it sounded very exciting to me as a young kid.)

Later found out from a friend who went through it that it was not so much fun: he only survived because he was tall and very athletic (he went on to be a first string running back at Illinois), and he said that most kids were picked on by upperclassmen continuously and mercilessly. He told me that he would never subject his own kids to it.

 

[Stearmen]

Sure, unless you're one of the birds being dawg'd. lol

When I was growing up the threat was, "We're going to send you to military school." I didn't even know what that meant or what "military school" was, but I'd seen the footage of the war in Vietnam on the evening news and knew I wanted nothing to do with anything associated with the word "military", so it worked.

Reminds me of an episode of Two And A Half Men, were Charlie threatens Jake with military school, and he added, "And it's not gonna be our military!"