They Say Em' From the Golden Era - Slang & Memorable Phrases

[Espee]

My grandmother would use "banging a kettle" as a synonym for yapping or yammering. "Quit banging a kettle over it."
-Viola

I learned from Michael Wex's book "Born to Kvetch" that the Yiddish "hak nisht ken tshaynik" (spelling varies) means "don't knock a teakettle" and that a character on the show Law and Order says "quit hakking me."
A friend told me her grandmother would say it like the book, while her aunt would say "Quit hakking mein teakettle."

 

[Espee]

I love this site for Golden Era Slang (and not just American like it's title suggests): The Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

One of my favourites is "cast an eyeball" for "look around" lol

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Just cast an eye in her direction, oh me oh my, ain't that perfection?
("Ain't She Sweet")

 

[Espee]

Tarnation!.. a big one where my sister lives in North Carolina.

It's a contraction of "What in the 'Entire Nation'......?

(Also, always loved hearing 'Hoss' say "Dad-burn-it!")

-dixon cannon

The comic character Nubbin used Tarnation a lot.
My dad would say dad-gum-it... and gee-ma-netly. (The former is a switch on ******nit, but I can't figure out the latter.)

 

[Espee]

... a switch on G-- D--- It...

 

[Espee]

Check this out, how to talk like Frank Sinatra:
http://artofmanliness.com/2008/02/11/talk-like-frank-sinatra/

The parody news site "The Onion" put out a book of historical front pages called "Our Dumb Century."
One placed in the early 1960s has Sinatra issuing an ultimatum to the USSR-- giving them "24 Hours To Drop This Commie Bunk Or Else It's Ring-a-Ding-Ding For You Bozos."

 

[Espee]

"Thats the Ticket"!, "Hello Joe, whataya know"!

There's a WWII movie where the U.S. soldiers at the front lines suspect Germans could infiltate wearing U.S. uniforms. So they greet any unknown G.I. with "Hello Joe, Whatdya Know?"
And if the answer isn't "Just got back from Kokomo," they know something's wrong.

 

[Espee]

My mother gave me, "It was like the wreck of the Hesperus," based on the poem by Longellow. My father inspired me with, "Nuts!" as well as with, "By way of Pittsburgh," the origin of which I have no idea. :eusa_doh:

I wouldn't think this would have spread into wide public knowledge, but the B&O RR had a lot of tight clearances along their Chicago-Washington DC mainline, until they were gradually eliminated in the fifties and early sixties.
Tall boxcars became more and more common in the thirties and forties, and they had to be segregated into high-car specials which took a longer route, via Pittsburgh.
So maybe...

 

[Espee]

My mom says when her parents would question her about something she was supposed to do, but didn't-- or something she did, that wasn't what they thought she should have done-- no matter how reasonable her explanation, they'd reply, "Alibi Ike..."
After the baseball player, in the story (and Joe E. Brown movie) of the same name.
It still makes her get red in the face.

 

[hatophile]

In The Big Sleep Bogart says to Dorothy Malone "I'm a private dick on a case". I love that line, even though - or maybe even because - it sounds a bit cheesy (if not naughty), at least to modern ears...

BTW: When Dorothy takes off her glasses and lets down her hair it's the most baffling transformation. Every time I watch this scene I fall in love with her all over again. "Hello!"

[video=youtube;Sqoxk3SrZRw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqoxk3SrZRw&feature=player_embedded[/video]
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I have to agree with you there, Mario. I rather like her as a brunette!

 

[Espee]

I know of Dorothy Malone from "Peyton Place" and as the partying widow of an unfortunate airline pilot in "Fate is the Hunter." I had no idea she was in films so early. In a quiz, I would have had trouble recognizing her-- I mean, being able to come up with the name.

 

[amador]

I'm not sure where the phrase origenated but one of my friends father used to say "...on the gravy train with biscuit wheels"
It was used in the movie Ghost Rider. Sounds like something that may have been said while riding a train during the Great Depression.

 

[Espee]

Something I saw on TCM over Christmas had a dejected lady sitting on a dock and a man trying to cheer her up. Eventually he asked her what had made her so unhappy that she was wanting to "do a Brodie into the creek."
(From Steve Brodie, who claimed in the late 1800s that he had survived a daredevil leap from the Brooklyn Bridge.)

 

[Stanley Doble]

Kicking the gong around had more to do with smoking opium than using herion. Also supposed to be the origin of "hip" since opium smokers enjoyed their drug while lying on their side, thus "on the hip" meant on an opium binge.

"Speaking of modern words, anyone know a 1930's equivalent for "nerd"? "

How about twerp, goof, brain, wet blanket, milquetoast, grind?

Doozie from Duesenberg, one of the most expensive, powerful and fast luxury cars in the world in the thirties. It's a Duesie was high praise.

Fair to middlin is actually a classification of cotton. When a farmer went to sell his cotton crop the buyer valued it at so much a pound depending on the quality. Fair and middling were 2 grades of cotton.

"Remember the little superstition -ary phrase couples used to say when, in walking together, something came between them - a pole or barrier, fence....etc...." Bread and Butter"? I thought that was so cute! "

I saw this last night. Watching Topper, there was a scene where a squad of cops linked hands to rake a room. One of them said "bread and butter" when a table passed between him and the next cop. This, and your post, are the only references to this custom I have ever seen.

"One of the old 'vintage phrases' I use regularly is 'book'. As in to 'make book'. Not sure how many people know what that means, but it's basically to be really sure and certain of something. You only print (make) a book when everything is sure, certain and correct, so saying you'll make book on something means you're absolutely certain and sure of yourself. "

Refers to a different kind of book making as in gambling. A bookie or book maker is someone who takes bets, so called from the hand book or ledger old time bookmakers recorded their bets in.

Saying you can make book on something means it is a sure thing, you can bet on it and win for a certainty.

Riding the gravy train, an old term meaning to get a free ride or have a job with good pay and hardly any work. My brother has a habit of getting old sayings mixed up and he once called this riding the gravy boat. I found this funny and use it myself.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I love old slang and use it a lot. Here are a couple of phrases you probably don't know, I barely know them myself.

Irish confetti for old broken bricks as from a house that is being demolished. I have seen this phrase in print exactly once in a sixties magazine but it sounds like it comes from the twenties or earlier. If you do not know what it means, when there is a holiday, parade or religious celebration and other nations throw confetti, the Irish....

Another is "sell 'em a load of clams".

"Director Sam Wood “was a perfectionist, as everyone under Thalberg had to be. He’d shoot a scene 20 times, from twenty different angles, before he’d go on to the next one. And every time he was ready to shoot, whether it was Take One or Take Nineteen, he’d give us the same instructions: ‘Okay boys—go in there and sell ‘em a load of clams.'”"

The only other use of this phrase I have ever seen was in a Mark Twain story about the colorful slang used in the mining camps in Nevada. In it, a miner calls on a young preacher to preach a funeral sermon over his dead friend, and says " We've got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, in No. 1's house, and don't you be afraid. Just go in and toot your horn, if you don't sell a clam."

Buck Fanshaw's Funeral from Roughing It

http://www.classicreader.com/book/1407/48/



I have been trying to figure out where this phrase came from for forty years. Yesterday I found it. I comes from a dreadful poem published in 1888. Here it is. Try not to bust a gut laughing.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=yWw...oot yer horn if you don't sell a clam&f=false

 

[Stanley Doble]

I love the slang they use in screwball comedies from the thirties and forties.

 

[Espee]

When my mom was about 70 she started doing "bread and butter" which I think she had been hearing from an even older lady.
That lady had another superstition, of clapping her hands one time whenever she saw a white horse. Which would not happen often around here, but it was startling and annoying when they were seatmates on a bus to a casino!

 

[vintage68]

Favorite Old-Fashioned Expressions

What are your favorite old-fashioned expressions, and are there some you try to use in modern conversations?

 

[AmateisGal]

I like to use "swell!" whenever possible.

 

[scottyrocks]

This is a great topic, but I think we already have a thread like this.

 

[scotrace]

This is a great topic, but I think we already have a thread like this.

Huge one. Merged.