Terms Which Have Disappeared

[2jakes]

Are we not multiple generations?

Are you sure you want to board this train?


Cheers Big Don!

 

[LizzieMaine]

However, all this probably encourages slang and colorful words on a massive level.

Which is exactly why I love English so, with all its dialects and crudities and pointed expressions. Prissiness has no place in a living language.

 

[2jakes]

Which is exactly why I love English so, with all its dialects and crudities and pointed expressions. Prissiness has no place in a living language.

The language in this series of the West comes to mind.
Although perhaps a bit overcooked at times.

 

[LizzieMaine]

From what I saw of that show, the swearing was far less creative for the period than it should have been. Mark Twain would have said that they knew the words, but not the tune.

 

[Fading Fast]

From what I saw of that show, the swearing was far less creative for the period than it should have been. Mark Twain would have said that they knew the words, but not the tune.

My girlfriend and I used to joke that Ian McShane's character Al Swearengen (intentionally named) used the F-word as every part of speech - noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc., - and, if you add in c***sucker, you have basically exhausted his vocabulary.

But the man can act.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That use of F. as an all purpose intensifier is very much a mid-20th Century innovation. The producer of the show once said in an interview that he was deliberately anachronistic in the vocabulary he chose, because actual Old West swearing wouldn't have sounded dirty enough to modern audiences. It was far more built around blasphemy and attacks on the legitimacy and parentage of the target than the sexual scatologies popular today.

 

[BlueTrain]

A few years ago there was a screening of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" for a studio audience of WWII veterans and afterwards, one of them said that he didn't think they swore that much. On the other hand, the level of swearing (meaning the use of vulgarity, not really swearing) in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" was exactly the way I remember everyone talking the same way when I was in the service and I wasn't even a Marine. Although I am a little embarrassed when people use a lot of vulgarity (swearing or otherwise), the way some people use it is positively hilarious.

In response to Lizzie's comments that posted before I finished this one, I'd agree that the way people swear or use vulgarity has changed and that what is done now that previously might have been censored is not really swearing in the strictest sense. We no long call on God to do our dirty work, you might say.

 

[2jakes]

That use of F. as an all purpose intensifier is very much a mid-20th Century innovation. The producer of the show once said in an interview that he was deliberately anachronistic in the vocabulary he chose, because actual Old West swearing wouldn't have sounded dirty enough to modern audiences. It was far more built around blasphemy and attacks on the legitimacy and parentage of the target than the sexual scatologies popular today.

I have a copy of a diary from 1840s of my ancestor being captured during the Texas rebellion.
It was not a happy experience and the language that was used as you pointed out.
Primarily of a religious nature.
Looks like this was the highest form of insult that was applied to your enemies.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A few years ago there was a screening of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" for a studio audience of WWII veterans and afterwards, one of them said that he didn't think they swore that much. On the other hand, the level of swearing (meaning the use of vulgarity, not really swearing) in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" was exactly the way I remember everyone talking the same way when I was in the service and I wasn't even a Marine. Although I am a little embarrassed when people use a lot of vulgarity (swearing or otherwise), the way some people use it is positively hilarious.

In response to Lizzie's comments that posted before I finished this one, I'd agree that the way people swear or use vulgarity has changed and that what is done now that previously might have been censored is not really swearing in the strictest sense. We no long call on God to do our dirty work, you might say.

A good guide to the language used during WWII is Norman Mailer's 1948 novel "The Naked and the Dead," in which he tried to be as realistic as possible about how the troops talked. His publishers, however, forced him to invent the substitute vulgarism "fug," instead using The Word. The book is therefore filled with "fug," "fuggin'" "fug you," "mother-fugger," "mother-fuggin" and so forth and so on. And of course, the F in "SNAFU" doesn't mean "Fouled."

 

[BobHufford]

The language in this series of the West comes to mind.
Although perhaps a bit overcooked at times.

My wife and I could not stop cursing for weeks after binge-watching this series. It took the dogs a bit longer. "Fatty" was the worst offender.

On a side note ... has anyone heard "ya big galoot" in awhile? It was probably 40 years ago that I last heard it.

 

[2jakes]

...On a side note ... has anyone heard "ya big galoot" in awhile? It was probably 40 years ago that I last heard it.

"Watch it...ya big galoot!"

 

[2jakes]

"Fiddle-faddle!"

 

[2jakes]

"What's Up Doc?"

"Am I the only one that says this?"

 

[LizzieMaine]

I often say "Vas ist uppen, herr Doktor?"

We had a big gommy kid working for us some years back who I often referred to as a "galoot," because that's what he was.

 

[2jakes]

"S'il vous plaît ...Merci bouquet"
Been saying this phrase ever since I can remember.
Usually when someone does something nice.

When I want to give my tongue a workout.
I can carry a conversation in Spanish.
On the occasions that I drink alcohol
the Spanish comes out with a lisp or a slur,
which is similar like in some parts of Spain.
listen to Rafael Nadal speak in his
native tongue will give you an idea.

 

[BlueTrain]

When I heard "Ya big galoot," it always seemed to be a humorous and mild term of endearment that was always applied to a guy (never a little guy, of course) and possibly one that could be used by another guy. It could be similar to "buddy," but that one could be used in speaking to a stranger, as in, "Hey, Buddy, got a match?" I can't imagine it being used by a child.

A German expression "Was ist los?" was widely used by American GIs in Germany but it was usually corrupted to "What's los?" No worse than "Wassup?" I guess. And these days the answer might be "Nada." I've mentioned elsewhere, I think, about knowing several Italian born immigrants around where I lived, yet I don't think an Italian words ever made their way into common language around there and nobody even spoke with a pseudo-Italian accent. But those Italians did not all have the same accent but only because they had different degrees of proficiency in English, same as all of those who were native born and descended from settlers who arrived 300 years earlier. However, there were some other names for Italian immigrants that weren't especially polite. There were also a few Middle-Easterners around there, too, mostly of the same age as the Italians. No matter where they were from, they were invariably referred to as "A-rabs," which was usually not intended to be disrespectful but was still considered humorous and anyway, that's the way the word was always pronounced there, then and now.

I did not, however, grow up in a household that ever used vulgarity or cursing. And to a large extent, neither did the households of my friends and neighbors. There were a couple of expressions (and hand gestures) that I never understood that I heard or saw but I wasn't really exposed to such language until I entered the army.

 

[ChiTownScion]

My girlfriend and I used to joke that Ian McShane's character Al Swearengen (intentionally named) used the F-word as every part of speech - noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc., - and, if you add in c***sucker, you have basically exhausted his vocabulary.

Standard joke between my wife & I:

Why did Wanda Sykes end up doing those Appleby's commercials?
To demonstrate that she could actually speak for 26 seconds without dropping the F- bomb.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Swearing was the lingua franca of my neighborhood -- most of the men worked on the docks, and most of the women were what used to be referred to as "fishwives," so we all learned how to do it from a very young age. The f-word, however, was not commonly used at all -- I never heard my grandfather use it, and he had a delightfully foul mouth otherwise. His specialty was stringing a long string of curses together into entire paragraphs of scatalogical blasphemy, usually directed at some sad-sack Red Sox relief pitcher who'd just given up a critical run. My mother inherited his tongue, and one of the funniest things there is in the world is hearing how she reacts to getting cut off in a confusing parking lot by some oaf in an SUV. Ma picked up the f-word, unfortunately, while working at a hospital in the '80s, and it has become a foundation word in her vocabulary. It's a lazy waste of talent to hear her depending on it when she's capable of swearing with such great skill.

My grandfather was also big on colorful descriptions of ethnic groups. He always referred to Italians as "ravioli-rasslers," which wasn't a nice thing to say, but it always made me laugh. Perhaps excusing it just slightly is the fact that in Maine the word "Italian"usually means a sloppy, oily sandwich sold wrapped in wax paper at a gas station, and not a person.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

The once-shocking sexual and scatological swearing that was absolutely forbidden in polite conversation and popular media when I was a boy has become so common we scarcely notice it now. Instead, the shocking words and phrases are racial or otherwise derogatory to a particular group. The N-word was casually dropped into conversation when I was young and there were innumerable words and expressions involving Jewishness that are absolutely forbidden today. We're just as easily shocked as we were, we're just shocked by different things. We've acquired a whole vocabulary of (choose the appropriate letter) - words so as not to say what everybody knows we mean but are not allowed to say.

 

[Fading Fast]

Growing up I didn't swear - it was not allowed in my house or school - but my dad would regularly fire out a "God d*mn it," "Jesus Christ" or, most often, "for Christ's sakes" that I never commented on even when told not to swear (being a smarty pants was not the route to survival in my house). Some kids did swear, but it wasn't a big thing even in my very economically and socially modest neighborhood (think, the TV show "The Wonder Years").

Where I "learned" to swear was, oddly, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Despite the perception by some that the NYSE - and finance in general - is a white shoe business (and parts of it are - Private Banking, Investment Banking, asset management), back in the '80s, the floor of the exchange was pretty rough and tumble with a bunch of kids from the tougher neighborhoods of Manhattan heavily mixed in with college grads giving the floor a tone-down East-Side-Kids-grown-up vibe.

My first job was as a phone clerk taking and tracking stock orders from "upstairs." I worked out of a "booth" (an open-to-the-main-floor rectangle of about twenty people) and heard every conceivable swear word and every lewd, rude sexual idea ever thought of in the history of time in that booth. Unfortunately, while never rising to the heights of proficiency of many, I did start to sprinkle swear words into my speech then and, despite having culled a lot since, have never fully shaken my vocabulary of it.

So I grew up in a modest town, but had to go to work in the center of the financial universe to learn how to swear. Real life truly is stranger than fiction.