Terms Which Have Disappeared

[2jakes]

My seventh grade English teacher called such phrases "word whiskers," linguistic excrescences that grew on perfectly legitimate sentences while serving no useful function in communicating the subject under discussion. Know what I mean?

Meanwhile, a phrase I've not heard in a long time is "ain't you a stitch!" A "stitch" was a person given to broad, loud humor -- and the phrase was usually not intended to be complimentary. When my uncle would fart to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" at the Thanksgiving table, my grandmother would glare balefully in his direction and say "Ain't you a stitch."

There's always a bit of envy growing with a large family.
Especially when one has a musical talent while the others
consider him a "pain in the a_ _ !"
A term that has not quite disappeared.

 

[p51]

"Praise the Lord"
There's a guy who ends everything with "praise-the-lord."
After awhile (it was a light conversation) I asked him..."right now?"
He asked, "right now what?"
"Start praising !"... I answered.
"Who?"...he asked.
"The lord !" I answered.
He looked at me for a moment & started laughing, he wasn't aware he was doing this !

I worked with a woman who was a little nuts, in a religious way. She used to shoehorn the phrase, "My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" into almost every sentence she ever said. Most people either just ignored it or quit talking to her quickly upon realizing this. Thankfully I rarely had to talk with her but it was clear to everyone but her that people would back way up and try to get away after the 3rd or 4th time they heard it.
You know how some women will mention their boyfriend or husband in a discussion that has nothing to do with them, I assume to send a message to a guy the woman might think is interested in her? You know how uncomfortable that is, right? Imagine everything a woman saying having something like that where it rarely belongs.
One day, another co-worker who was also a Baptist minister at a small rural church just lost it on her.
"For the love of... You do not have to mention your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with every single breath you take. People who know you know you're a Christian, don't you know you don't have to mention it every single time you open your mouth?!?!?!?"
She just stood there in slack-jawed befuddlement. If anyone could have said that to her in the office, it was him.
She later apologized to everyone in the area, as it was then obvious that she'd had no clue she'd been saying it so often before that.

 

[St. Louis]

Sounds as though it had become one of those unconscious and tiresome verbal tics, like the above-mentioned "you knowwhatImean?" or "what was I gonna say," which I'm hearing more and more often lately. On days when the job has been more than extraordinarily annoying I'll insist on an explanation. "No, I'm not sure what you mean. Could you explain?" Or, "I'm sorry, I really don't know what you were going to say. Would you tell me when you find out?" Normally I try to control those impulses, though.

 

[Stearmen]

Can't remember if any one used this one? A hoot and a half!

 

[fashion frank]

How about " stop giving me the high hat " and " get off your soapbox "

All the Best,Fashion Frank

 

[tropicalbob]

When I was in school in Baltimore many years ago, I often heard the word "like" used in a peculiar way, as in "I like to die when I heard that." It was only recently that I discovered it was an Elizabethan usage and is to be found in the works of Shakespeare, Jonson, and others. That makes sense to me, as the Baltimore dialect (variations found in Del. and Virginia) still has the rounded English "O" of that time.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Here in HoosierLand it goes: " I liked to died when I heard that"...but who's Elizabethan..? Was she married to some guy named Shakespeare..?? :becky:

 

[Zombie_61]

Can't remember if any one used this one? A hoot and a half!

I've dispensed with the "half", but will on occasion refer to a particular event as having been "a hoot".

Also, not that one has anything to do with the other, but I'll sometimes call my wife "Toots", used as a term of endearment.

 

[tropicalbob]

Here in HoosierLand it goes: " I liked to died when I heard that"...but who's Elizabethan..? Was she married to some guy named Shakespeare..?? :becky:

I think you're right. I was trying to remember if it was "die' or "died." Maryland and Virginia were both largely settled by people escaping the Puritans between 1640 and 1660: Catholics in the former colony and Church of England adherents in the latter. Many of my high school friends in Baltimore back in the 60's had English last names and were Roman Catholic. And maybe "the Dark Lady" of the Sonnets was Liz Taylor.

 

[2jakes]

www.kilroywashere.org/001-Pages/01-0KilroyLegends.html

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

... I often heard the word "like" used in a peculiar way, ...

Well, here's one which cannot disappear soon enough. People thirty or more years younger than I am have a verbal tick which drives me crazy. That is, they interject "like" every few words while speaking. It serves only as a replacement for "uuuh" or "ummm" while the speaker gathers his or her thoughts for the next bit of speaking, but because it's a real word, it's an annoying distraction. Imagine giving an order at a "quick service restaurant", and your server asks, "Do you want, like, fries with that?" I want to ask, "What have you got that's like fries, but not fries?"

And while I'm on a rant about the way young people are speaking these days, is anyone else annoyed by people making a declarative statement (not a question), and raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a phrase as if they were asking a question? Is this a bi-coastal phenomenon, or does it take place everywhere?

 

[dh66]

Here in HoosierLand it goes: " I liked to died when I heard that"...but who's Elizabethan..? Was she married to some guy named Shakespeare..?? :becky:

When I was in school in Baltimore many years ago, I often heard the word "like" used in a peculiar way, as in "I like to die when I heard that." It was only recently that I discovered it was an Elizabethan usage and is to be found in the works of Shakespeare, Jonson, and others. That makes sense to me, as the Baltimore dialect (variations found in Del. and Virginia) still has the rounded English "O" of that time.

Heard that a lot as a kid growing up. It's sort of a more elaborate way to say almost or nearly. My mom or grandmom used it to describe a situation they were taken aback by. "I like to have died when I heard the preacher had been going around with the choir director!"

Down here it always sounded like "like tuv died"

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Do you suppose that the unabbreviated version was, "likely to have died"? It seems more plausible that the speakers were describing their state of shock rather than their wish to join their ancestors.

 

[tropicalbob]

I think dh66 has it about right. I got into it because I'd noticed an odd usage of the word in Jonson's "On my First Son," where, in talking about the death of his seven-year-old son, he uses "like" in terms of "likeness." It's one of the most intense poems in English. Really beautiful.

 

[F. J.]

Upspeak, annoying upspeak . . .

[...]
And while I'm on a rant about the way young people are speaking these days, is anyone else annoyed by people making a declarative statement (not a question), and raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a phrase as if they were asking a question? Is this a bi-coastal phenomenon, or does it take place everywhere?

I hear it down here in Mississippi.
The technical name for it is high rising terminal, but it is commonly referred to as “upspeak.” I don’t really care what you call it, it’s annoying as heck.
When grown men talk like that, and I hear them fairly often, it makes them sound, frankly, well, effeminate.

 

[fashion frank]

I hear it down here in Mississippi.
The technical name for it is high rising terminal, but it is commonly referred to as “upspeak.” I don’t really care what you call it, it’s annoying as heck.
When grown men talk like that, and I hear them fairly often, it makes them sound, frankly, well, effeminate.

Is that what they call it , it pi**es me off when I hear people speaking like that and your right for some reason it seems that teenage girls (I know I have one ) tend to do that more than boys ,again here we go with everything in life being lowered to the gutter :rage:

All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[LizzieMaine]

The prevailing theory in linguistic circles is that it's a cultural thing -- girls are subconsciously taught by the culture from childhood that it's "unfeminine" to make straight declarative statements because men find it threatening. So they're conditioned early on to turn their statements into questions, thus assuming a non-threatening voice.

This is seen as a real detriment to young women who want to be taken seriously in the workplace, and there are speech therapists who will train women away from this habit.

The speech habit I can't stand is what's called "vocal fry." It's the opposite of the high rising terminal, in which every sentence is ended on a downbeat, but enunciated in a sort of rough rasp. The kids tell me it's the way Kim Kardassian talks, but it sounds to me like a degenerated version of 1980s "valley girl" talk. We will often adopt this voice at work as a joke, and once you start talking that way the habit becomes hard to break.

 

[tropicalbob]

Well, here's one which cannot disappear soon enough. People thirty or more years younger than I am have a verbal tick which drives me crazy. That is, they interject "like" every few words while speaking. It serves only as a replacement for "uuuh" or "ummm" while the speaker gathers his or her thoughts for the next bit of speaking, but because it's a real word, it's an annoying distraction. Imagine giving an order at a "quick service restaurant", and your server asks, "Do you want, like, fries with that?" I want to ask, "What have you got that's like fries, but not fries?"

And while I'm on a rant about the way young people are speaking these days, is anyone else annoyed by people making a declarative statement (not a question), and raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a phrase as if they were asking a question? Is this a bi-coastal phenomenon, or does it take place everywhere?

Hasn't that been around since the Beatniks? I seem to remember Maynard G. Krebs on "The Dobie Gillis Show" saying "It's, like, crazy, man, crazy!"

 

[tropicalbob]

One of the worst forums for the "high rising terminal" today is NPR. A simple declarative sentence seems an impossibility; it's almost as if everyone has to ask "Is that okay with you?" And when did it become normal to begin the answer to every question with the word "So"? It's a conjunction meaning "therefore," so why are these people using it when they haven't said anything yet?

 

[tropicalbob]

We're living in a world in which the Kardassians are role models and, according to some cretinous high school teacher in California the other day, Shakespeare should be removed from the curriculum. Don't laugh: I've actually heard this before, usually from people with education majors in college. Such people have never considered the distinctions between literature and propaganda.