Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Trenchfriend]

I'm such a boy. An enjoying "Bohème". A little feminine, with an "aesthetical sensibility".

?

 

[LizzieMaine]

So a cake eater is equivalent to a lounge lizard?

Pretty much. A cake eater was usually a younger fellow, teens to college-age, while a lounge lizard was older than that. Cake eaters, unless corrected in their habits, would usually grow up to become lounge lizards.

Harold Lloyd sometimes portrayed "cake eater" type characters in his films, who invariably discovered a surprising inner strength when presented with a menace, which caused them to abandon their cake-eating ways in favor of manly direct action. Such was the trope of the times.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A typical cake-eater in action, c. 1926.

*Not* a cake-eater.

Enthusiasts of the funny-papers might recall that Dagwood Bumstead started out in life as a cake-eater, and he retains vestiges of the wardrobe to this day.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Oops, I was wrong. Now I know exactly.

http://www.dict.cc/?s=cake+eater

http://www.dict.cc/?s=lounge+lizard&failed_kw=loungelizard A "parlor-lion", aaaah!!

A preppy...

 

[Stanley Doble]

In Canada 'caker' has a different meaning. It comes from the Italian 'mangiacake' and is used to describe a certain type of anglo saxon Canadian. I'm sure the Italian version comes from the English cake eater and was adapted for their use.

Here is a website devoted to Caker cooking which will be familiar to many of you especially if you have ever attended a church supper in Minnesota.

http://cakercooking.blogspot.ca/

 

[ChiTownScion]

A typical cake-eater in action, c. 1926.

*Not* a cake-eater.

The "cake eater" actually ended up with gal. Hot pups!

 

[Trenchfriend]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagwood_sandwich

Who offers it, today?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Today, first time I heared "twinset", on ladies-clothing. Never read it before. A pullover and a same designed cardigan overhead. Seems to be a nice, timeless basic. But I don't know, if I ever saw this on any woman.

 

[kaiser]

Today, first time I heared "twinset", on ladies-clothing. Never read it before. A pullover and a same designed cardigan overhead. Seems to be a nice, timeless basic. But I don't know, if I ever saw this on any woman.

My wife used to wear them all the time about 10 years ago, but I think they have gone out of style. She still does have one that she wears for smart casual things though.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had a very nice twinset before the moths got to it.

"Mothproofing" is something you don't hear much about anymore. Pity.

 

[Stearmen]

Gotta Jet!

 

[Stearmen]

Faster then a Saber jet!

 

[MisterCairo]

"A tall drink of water".

"Hold your horses".

"A month of Sundays".

"Once in a blue moon".

"I don't give a tinker's damn".

Phrases I use because my parents did, but that I rarely hear anyone else use.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"It looks like Old Home Week around here!"

 

[Stanley Doble]

How about whizzing around like a fart in a mitt. My older relatives sometimes used that one, years ago.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For years I've wondered about the origin of a phrase I first ran across in a 1920s recording engineer's log, in which the technician on duty noted that a "power tube went democratic." From the context it was evident that this tube had suffered a catastrophic failure, and I imagined that there had to be some obscure political origin to the phrase, but I couldn't quite pin it down. But today I came across a note in a turn-of-the-century magazine article indicating that the phrase was in common use among African-Americans in the South during the Reconstruction Era -- when the vote "went Democratic," in a time when the Southern Democratic party stood for disenfranchisement and segregation, circumstances went very much against their interests. How a presumably-white technician in New Jersey in 1929 happened to pick up this obscure bit of forty-year-old slang would likely make an interesting story.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@LizzieMaine

It makes more sense to me, if it would be this: "went demotic", also "went folksy".

 

[2jakes]

@Trenchfriend



On the contrary, it does make sense what LizzieMaine said about that phrase.

I have a diary about the ordeals my ancestor along with others who were
captured by the Mexican army under the command of General Santa Anna
in the mid 1800s.
Some of the words or phrases that were in use back then, probably would not
make much sense to you or anyone else today.

The HBO series “Deadwood” & the florid language that is used
(minus the heavy use of cuss words) is similar in the manner that
the folks expressed themselves .

Phrases that today have gone, “the way of the dodo “.

 

[Fading Fast]

For years I've wondered about the origin of a phrase I first ran across in a 1920s recording engineer's log, in which the technician on duty noted that a "power tube went democratic." From the context it was evident that this tube had suffered a catastrophic failure, and I imagined that there had to be some obscure political origin to the phrase, but I couldn't quite pin it down. But today I came across a note in a turn-of-the-century magazine article indicating that the phrase was in common use among African-Americans in the South during the Reconstruction Era -- when the vote "went Democratic," in a time when the Southern Democratic party stood for disenfranchisement and segregation, circumstances went very much against their interests. How a presumably-white technician in New Jersey in 1929 happened to pick up this obscure bit of forty-year-old slang would likely make an interesting story.

That is fantastic. Love it.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

For years I've wondered about the origin of a phrase I first ran across in a 1920s recording engineer's log, in which the technician on duty noted that a "power tube went democratic." From the context it was evident that this tube had suffered a catastrophic failure, and I imagined that there had to be some obscure political origin to the phrase, but I couldn't quite pin it down. But today I came across a note in a turn-of-the-century magazine article indicating that the phrase was in common use among African-Americans in the South during the Reconstruction Era -- when the vote "went Democratic," in a time when the Southern Democratic party stood for disenfranchisement and segregation, circumstances went very much against their interests. How a presumably-white technician in New Jersey in 1929 happened to pick up this obscure bit of forty-year-old slang would likely make an interesting story.

It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that your radio engineer might have been a jazz fan. After all, even in "the day" jazz records were played on the air. If he were a real aficionado, he may well have been a customer at nightclubs where black jazz musicians played. It seems like a not-unlikely place for him to have picked up slang current among the musicians.