Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Upgrade]

Do grandmothers still "blue" their hair anymore?

Also, I haven't seen paper-wrapped sugar cubes in restaurants anymore. Unless it's a very formal one.

 

[Zombie_61]

Do grandmothers still "blue" their hair anymore?

I don't know if they're grandmothers, but I've seen some older women in this part of southern California who still do. Why they think it looks better than white, blonde/white, silver, or gray hair I have no idea.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I use a hair dressing with blue in it. It makes my hair look white and not dull and yellow. If women with white or gray hair use a blue rinse it does the same, if they overdo it, the hair turns blue. I suspect this is how blue hair started, hairdressers overdid the blue rinse that was supposed to make the hair white. Then somehow it became a thing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

More than a few of the old ladies of my youth would rinse their hair with laundry bluing in the kitchen sink -- just a few drops of "Mrs. Stewart's" would brighten the white, just like it did with yellowed sheets and pillowcases.

 

[MisterCairo]

During the Stratford Shakespearean Festival each year, we locals can complain of the "Michigan Blue Hairs" taking up parking spaces down town, and driving really large cars slowly down the main drag, not knowing that a flashing green light is an "advance" green and yes, dahling, you do have the right of way...

 

[tonyb]

I use a hair dressing with blue in it. It makes my hair look white and not dull and yellow. If women with white or gray hair use a blue rinse it does the same, if they overdo it, the hair turns blue. I suspect this is how blue hair started, hairdressers overdid the blue rinse that was supposed to make the hair white. Then somehow it became a thing.

I suspect you're quite right about this.

In another life I had a gig that required I wear a white shirt. I had no laundry facilities at home, so I frequently washed my shirts in the kitchen double sink and line dried 'em and then ironed 'em. Mrs. Stewart's bluing was my friend. A few drops in the rinse basin.

During the Stratford Shakespearean Festival each year, we locals can complain of the "Michigan Blue Hairs" taking up parking spaces down town, and driving really large cars slowly down the main drag, not knowing that a flashing green light is an "advance" green and yes, dahling, you do have the right of way...

Among some of my one-time associates, "blue hair" was not-particlarly-subtle code for an old woman with an upturned nose, who often wore white gloves and went to tea at Frederick & Nelson and tipped a dime. Her hair needn't be blue to earn the appellation. Just being an old snoot was enough.

 

[Stanley Doble]

You don't have to be an old coot to have white hair. I am now but my hair turned gray when I was 26. I think the same thing happened to Steve Martin.

 

[Bushman]

You don't have to be an old coot to have white hair. I am now but my hair turned gray when I was 26. I think the same thing happened to Steve Martin.

I knew a guy in high school who started going gray when he was 16. My Dad's best friend was like that, too. Started graying in high school.

 

[tonyb]

It was apparent by my last year of high school that I would be bald on top before long. The grey was creeping in by my mid-20s.

 

[Zombie_61]

My hairline is at least an inch higher than it used to be, and my hair has slowly been thinning for several years now, particularly in the typical "bald spot" area where the top of your head transitions to the back of your head. The same woman, Nicole, has been cutting my hair, and my wife's hair, for the past 30+ years, and during a haircut four or five years ago I caught her and my wife standing behind me looking at the back of my head and talking in hushed tones. When I asked, "Are you talking about my bald spot?" it took them by surprise, and after collecting herself Nicole quietly asked, "Oh, you know about it?" She still tries to cut my hair in a way that helps to conceal it, but I really don't care. I'm 55 years old; it's about time I start showing some signs of age.

My hair is also slowly going gray, but my beard is way ahead of it. During a different haircut Nicole asked if I had ever thought about dyeing it, and I barely had time to say "No," before she said, "I knew it. If you ever seriously asked me to dye your hair or your beard, I'd refuse." When I asked why, she replied, "That's just not your style." As I wrote above, 30+ years; she knows me pretty well.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I think the closest things to pure American folk music are the rude little jingles kids sing in the street:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school!
We have tortured all the teachers and have broken all the rules!
Now we're marching down the corridor to kill the principal!
Our troops are marching on!

Glory, glory hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a rul-ah!
I hit her in the bean
With a rotten tangerine
And she sank like a German submarine!"

I learned the chorus with the last line, "And her teeth came marching out!"

 

[Fading Fast]

Just used this one in another post (I can never think of these expressions if I try, but they just "pop out" when I am posting elsewhere):

"he doesn't have two nickels to rub together" to indicate someone has no money literally or are of very modest means and can't afford whatever is in question.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Just used this one in another post (I can never think of these expressions if I try, but they just "pop out" when I am posting elsewhere):

"he doesn't have two nickels to rub together" to indicate someone has no money literally or are of very modest means and can't afford whatever is in question.

My grandmother used to say "he ain't got a pot to [urinate] in or a window to throw it out of."

 

[LizzieMaine]

And thus by extension a person or family in such circumstances was "p---pot poor."

 

[ChiTownScion]

My grandmother used to say "he ain't got a pot to [urinate] in or a window to throw it out of."

I've heard the follow- up of, "... or a friend to catch it."

 

[St. Louis]

The other day I heard a very young man talk about "dialing" a number. I was shocked -- I thought that expression had completely died out. Hasn't it?

 

[scottyrocks]

And thus by extension a person or family in such circumstances was "p---pot poor."

We used that one without the word 'pot.'

 

[LizzieMaine]

The other day I heard a very young man talk about "dialing" a number. I was shocked -- I thought that expression had completely died out. Hasn't it?

I only ever hear it now in combination words like "speed-dial" or "redial." And you never see ads anymore on the sides of trucks that say "Dial LY 4-8451"

 

[Upgrade]

Some expressions still survive even though the technology it was based on has died out/passed from popular usage:

Roll down your windows (car window cranks)

It takes a while to warm up (vacuum tubes)

Balls out (the balls on the ends of a governor)

Don't touch that dial (fine for radio, but most televisions no longer have dials)

Sounds like a broken record (a lot of people tend to think of a shattered record)

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Ships still "sail."
We still talk of "steam shovels" and "steam rolllers" even though they haven't been steam-powered in a hundred years.