once-common words people don’t use anymore

suet

creosote

chilblains

If your home has a chimney, you're gonna talk about creosote all the time.

We were talking about chilblains a lot over the past two months (as in did the husband have chilblains or covid toe, we decided the latter). Was it ever really common though?

I still frequently buy lamb suet for making DUMPLINGS!

'Creosote' appears in a song by The Clientele that I have played a few times this week.

cor!

Suet is also common in bird feeders.

I'm sorry, Tracer Hand, that we are working so hard to debunk your OP.

I think I say 'Cor'.

desuetude

hwæt

I still use 'hwæt'.

Cobblers

hwæt, sôðe?

There's probably somewhere in Derbyshire or somewhere where people still talk like that.

Sóþsecgendlíce.

lol, I totally use suet, it's what you put in bird feeders.

'Iceland' I think it's called.

2xp

flummadiddle

think West Frisian is supposed to be the closest extant dialect to Old English

It is, but Icelandic is cooler. Besides, Frisian is also closest to modern English.

I buy suet once a year to make Christmas Pudding

if we're talking ilx, i would say RONG never gets used anymore

If you had searched for that, you would have found yourself to be incorrect.

nobody was capitalizing it tho!

The girl group song 'Terry' features the line 'we had a quarrel, I was untrue on the night he died' and every time I hear it I wonder when 'quarrel' and 'untrue' (in that context) fell out of their once-popular use.

Eh?

Tom D: I say 'cobblers' almost literally every day.

And I don't even work at an old-fashioned shoe repair shop.

(xp) Oh I get what you mean about the context for 'untrue', but I think it was old fashioned even then.

Using pop culture as a yardstick, 'untrue' as an analogue of 'unfaithful' seems to have been in fairly regular usage in the '60s. I hear it pop up quite a bit in songs, movies, shows, etc. from that era but not really much thereafter.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/BurialUntrue.jpg

Well, it's easy to rhyme, which can never be underestimated in song writing.

Varlet

if we're talking ilx, i would say RONG never gets used anymore

you aren't hearing "shan't" much in the US these days, and "shall" only got a stay of execution from Gandalf

xpost it makes you vintage

When I was six it was very common for kids my age to say "keen" to mean cool, great, awesome. And then it seemed as if overnight everyone stopped saying it. (Absolutely nobody said "awesome" when I was six but by the time I was 14 everyone said it). Granted kids often have their own words, but some older people said "keen" also, I'm pretty sure of it.

"Lumbago" was a pretty common term up to and throughout the 70's, to identify any sort of back pain. Archie Bunker and Fred G. Sanford were all over it! Seems like "sciatica" has taken its place.

The G. is for “grebt.”

does anybody say "kneeslapper" anymore

xp
a Canadianism I enjoy is "keener"

xp to myself

I think it was lumbago that had George Jefferson walking on Bentley's back.

"Lumbago" was a pretty common term up to and throughout the 70's, to identify any sort of back pain. Archie Bunker and Fred G. Sanford were all over it! Seems like "sciatica" has taken its place.

cf the Small Faces, "Lazy Sunday"

TIL that that line in "Lazy Sunday" is "How's old Bert's lumbago?"

Always thought it was "How's your bird's lumbago?"

there are words people used to say in the playground a lot that were conflating being silly/stupid with being mentally handicapped. I don't really want to even say what they were, but it always amazes me that these words were common enough to be learned by children. I'm glad I don't hear them any more.

xp to myself

I think it was lumbago that had George Jefferson walking on Bentley's back.

TIL that that line in "Lazy Sunday" is "How's old Bert's lumbago?"

Always thought it was "How's your bird's lumbago?"

"How's yer Bert's lumbago?" surely?

Hm it does sound slightly more like "your" than "old." I just went by some random lyric site... now I see there's another site that says it's "your old Bert's"!

lumbago was a final jeopardy answer a few years ago and nobody got it. the clue: "Adding “P” to a word for a chronic back condition gets you this synonym for graphite or pencil lead". one of the contestants was a latin teacher.

milliner / millinery

Never heard lumbago used in conversation but come across it all the time in medical coding.

you aren't hearing "shan't" much in the US these days, and "shall" only got a stay of execution from Gandalf

At school in the 80s I had a very old English teacher who insited it be spelled "sha'n't"

That’s the Lewis Carroll spelling right

Literally never seen it anywhere else

modals are a fun subject in English, there's been a big shift in their use over the last fifty or so years but as a rule nobody really notices it

(side note: shall as a first-person variant of will is both characteristically English fuckery and susceptible to falling into disuse... the Irish never fell for it, and probably consequently US English isn't super into it either)

Goolies

I imagine hashtag has more or less replaced pound sign except on automated telephone menus, though today I learned it’s actual name is an octothorpe.

goolies is such a Young Ones word

catarrh

actually, there are quite a few outmoded medical terms that once were in common use

All of l33t sp34k

Rascal? Rascal Flatts and Dizzee Rascal notwithstanding, I don't feel like it's a word anyone really uses in common parlance.

No, I still hear rascal used in a lighthearted way.

I still enjoy using 'druthers' but I fear that when I do others may mistake me for a grizzled prospector or somesuch.

was just reading a book where someone was turned down by the army for having flat feet. do people still have flat feet? why are they no longer a problem?

Orthotics are a big industry

And I think the condition is usually called fallen arches now, which at least sounds more poetic

Twitter says this

Studies analyzing the correlation between flat feet and physical injuries in soldiers have been inconclusive, but none suggest that flat feet are an impediment, at least in soldiers who reached the age of military recruitment without prior foot problems. Instead, in this population, there is a suggestion of more injury in high arched feet. A 2005 study of Royal Australian Air Force recruits that tracked the recruits over the course of their basic training found that neither flat feet nor high arched feet had any impact on physical functioning, injury rates or foot health. If anything, there was a tendency for those with flat feet to have fewer injuries. Another study of 295 Israel Defense Forces recruits found that those with high arches suffered almost four times as many stress fractures as those with the lowest arches. A later study of 449 U.S. Navy special warfare trainees found no significant difference in the incidence of stress fractures among sailors and Marines with different arch heights.

Not twitter, wikipedia

what is wrong with my brain this weekend?

I have flat feet. My mum took me to a chiropodist a few times and I had to wear arches in my shoes for a bit but they were fucking uncomfortable so I used to just take them out. It's still unclear to me what the actual problem is tbh, never caused me any issues in my life.

Having never applied to join the army I don't know if it's still a thing.

i have high arches and was told that they contributed to my frequent ankle sprains (no idea if this is true)

don't posties get called flat-footed? I have heard a postie getting called a "flat-footed fucker" before. if you can't shoot people then mailshot them!

long ago in the US, cops who walked their beats were sometimes called flat-foots

lumbago is a great one

lamaze

cruet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHIno814zE

I don't know what 'modal' is, and have never truly understood the distinction between 'will' and 'shall', if indeed there truly is one.

knockers
bristols
whatchamacallit
thingamajig

I remember being annoyed when I heard on the radio that "charabanc" was one of the words being dropped from the OED that year. I had only just used it when swearing at some useless minibus driver blocking up the road with his poxy charabanc.

Modal is just about modifying a verb in terms of intent/likelihood. I've taught it to lower school kids as 'lottery' verbs ie 'when I win the lottery, I might buy this, I could buy this but I will buy that for sure.'

The will/shall distinction feels archaic to me albeit still on the spectrum of intent. That old tale of a man drowning and shouting 'I will drown!' and people thinking, fine, if you're that sure you carry on mush. Whereas if he'd shouted 'I shall drown' everyone would have waded in to help.

I heard someone say 'crivvens' when they tripped up a kerb the other day. A much underused exclamation.

I'm pretty sure I still say 'whatchamacallit' quite often, as well as 'oopsadaisy'.

no one talks about "the web" or "the net" these days do they? apart from like, eminem and other old people

so glad "internets" and its worse variants seem to have died for good. maybe wonkette still uses them idk

Modal very popular with user interface designers.

yes that's on my 'words I never used until about six years ago' list

The will/shall distinction feels archaic to me albeit still on the spectrum of intent. That old tale of a man drowning and shouting 'I will drown!' and people thinking, fine, if you're that sure you carry on mush. Whereas if he'd shouted 'I shall drown' everyone would have waded in to help.

It's even more complicated than that... will and shall switch meanings based on person:

I will drown! = I intend to drown, don't stop me!
I shall drown! = I am about to drown, help me!
He will drown! = He is about to drown, help him!
He shall drown! = He intends to drown, don't stop him!

Feel like nobody says "it stinks" anymore when judging the quality of something. "Sucks" seems to now be the only term people use in that context.

F. Hazel, is that true about the last usage? ie that 'shall' for a 3rd person implies intent and willing? I didn't know that.

I would say that 'the net' was an earlier common usage; then 'the web' was seen as more correct and people stopped saying net; then just 'online' became normal; but I'm not sure that 'web' has disappeared.

Might have more a shade of command to it than intent, but yeah. It was always a prescriptivist hack to address the supposed ambiguity of shall vs. will, it's very much written about and presumably some speakers actively made the distinction in their speech and writing. Think of it like the may/can distinction in modern English... everyone uses "can" to request permission and express ability, and it confuses nobody because the context makes the meaning clear. But some dingbat is always going to respond with "I'm sure you CAN, are you asking me if you MAY?"

It seems as if even "online" is gradually fading since it's becoming redundant in such phrases as "Last week I bought an (x) online." Might take a while for it to disappear altogether though.

Feel like nobody says "it stinks" anymore when judging the quality of something. "Sucks" seems to now be the only term people use in that context.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/24/keir-starmer-renews-call-for-inquiry-into-government-sleaze

The Labour leader told BBC News: “It matters. It is about integrity, it is about taxpayers’ money. Every day, there is more evidence of this sleaze. Frankly, it stinks.

“If there is nothing to see here, whether it is the refurb of No 10, whether it is the dodgy contracts, whether it is the privileged access, if there is nothing to see, publish everything, have a full inquiry.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Calling a person a "stinker" is totally retro. Makes me think of an elementary school teacher in the mid-1970s.

https://cdnmetv.metv.com/lVOeb-1611690446-16110-list_items-cecil.jpg

I have had way too many arguments about "shall" because in some professional contexts it has contractual and therefore legal weight.

In governmentese, if you say you will do something, or you should do something, those imply predictions.

If a contract says that you shall do that thing, it implies an enforceable requirement. It means "must," even "must, or else." Fail not, herewith, at your peril.

After taking an Al Gore-approved "Plain English in Government" class, I spent a few weeks trying to convince clients and colleagues that you could just use "must" in place of "shall." I could not make any headway against the tide, and eventually stopped doing government work altogether.

I love the idea that any kind of political language implies intent. Surely the whole industry is founded on equivocation?

xp "stinks" (and "flippin'" too, for that matter) is an accepted swear-word substitute for evangelicals, and is widely used by that lot.

Chinaski, was that to me? I am not talking about politics but rather government contracting. In contracting, "shall" has the force of law. You won't get paid if you don't do a thing that has a "shall" next to it.

Sorry YMP, that did sound a bit aggressive! Was more an open point about political language and intent.

I have a friend who works at a ticket vendor that gives customers a week to request a refund for a cancelled concert, or they will get store credit by default. She’s had a handful of customers who missed the deadline arguing that the email is worded “customers should contact us within 7 days”, not that they must, so the deadline isn’t binding.

I wrote "alas" the other day in a social media post and someone was like "do you use 'alas' in everyday conversation?"

Uh, yes, I do. Verily. Forsooth.

Zounds!

I think 'alas' is used quite a lot. Maybe even too much!

Alack!

Alackaday

nave

sacristy

narthex

choke (as in an engine)

my dad's riding lawnmower used to have a choke

maybe that's just me though, maybe chokes still exist and people still use them

Lascivious

choked by lascivious lawnmower

anyway, I like the word “lascivious” a lot, it’s very good at what it does. wasn’t aware it led a moribund existence.

integrity

quinsy

Penultimate

In the 80s it seemed like every eastern guru in American media was called a swami. Haven't heard that term used since.

good one

My motorbikes have chokes, I use that all the time.

My late father used to say that someone acted 'niggardly' (cheap, tightwad) and I remember feeling uncomfortable even though it's (probably?) an innocent if obsolete word

hale fellow

what vim!

People don't use 'penultimate' anymore? What? I've got to admit some of the words being suggested here are making me if I don't move in completely different circles.

... make me wonder.... ffs.

I agree with Tom D: the concept of words that people no longer use is definitely valid, but I'm surprised by many entries here.

'Lascivious' is another example, I use it whenever appropriate. It's in probably the most famous B&S song. I don't see it as archaic at all.

“vim” is frequently used in Ghanaian Pidgin English. was hearing it a lot in the songs I was listening to, thinking it was a local slang word, and only found out much later that it was actually a word in standard English

Vim is yet another word that I would still use now.

those are fair comments. i still stand by 'swami' being an excellent example of a once common word that is not only not used any more but that i think people would actively search for an alternative for if they were, say, editing a book that contained it.

i think mostly the flavour of thing i'm looking for in this thread is words that refer to habits that are no longer maintained by many (i.e. religious ritual) or words referring to the natural world, or outdated remedies/techniques - that were once incredibly common.

i.e. mercurochrome.

or 'rill'.

Not exactly common perhaps but this footnote in 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' tickled me:

Budzak, Crim Tartary, Circassia, and Mingrelia, are the modern appellations of those savage countries.

That's the other thing, a lot of these words were never in common usage.

Suet, creosote and chillblains, I'll give you!

... a line from a very weird love song.

girl I’m gonna make you suet

Tracer: thus vespers, evensong, Whitsuntide, etc?

lol (xp)

"camera tricks"

great ones!

The wireless.

People don't use 'penultimate' anymore?

I use it almost daily lol.

I know a lot of people who use it incorrectly to mean "the best", which is kind of hilarious ("it's really really ultimate!")

Ecological

Not wanting to be the wet blanket, but the many of the words cited here were never particularly common.

wireless

that's a good one!

https://www.sababacuisine.com/uploads/1/3/2/8/132807060/s607480734560611379_p98_i1_w409.jpeg

gnarly

cowabunga

"wireless" is surely at least seen in print/on the screen constantly right? even if ppl just say "wifi." "the wireless adapter..." "select the wireless network..." "wireless data transfer requires that both devices are set to...."

I don't seem to see 'dyspeptic' anymore. I remember first coming across it in some 1960s-era profile of Andrew Loog Oldham "...and swears like a dyspeptic drill sergeant".

I think Tom D. was specifically referring to the (mainly British?) usage of “wireless” as a noun meaning radio set or receiver.

I was.

makes sense!

has "fortune-teller" disappeared from common usage? just had a thought about how common it used to be in song lyrics.

(i know fortune-telling still thrives, just can't remember what it's typically called these days)

In the 80s it seemed like every eastern guru in American media was called a swami. Haven't heard that term used since

Pretty sure swami is still around as a term. Maybe there are fewer enlightened master/mistresses around these days.

broadband

"sparkling soft drinks" is definitely one

catarrh

My young kids are bilingual (Polish-English) because of their mom, and since "katar" is the common Polish term we all call it that when we're speaking English. Better than "snot" and I appreciate the old-timey-ness.

"hella"

“mega”

makes sense!

has "fortune-teller" disappeared from common usage? just had a thought about how common it used to be in song lyrics.

"hella" is said probably 750,000x per day in Oakland

Kinda cheating to cite trendy slang words here. But if we are, I'd add "bitchin".

Obviously people still say "purposely" so it doesn't technically count for this thread, but more and more I feel like I hear people using "purposefully" in contexts where they would've used "purposely" in the past

'othering' - I don't despise this word but it's sure having a moment

wait wrong thread

"Behoof," which I just read in a court opinion.

has "fortune-teller" disappeared from common usage? just had a thought about how common it used to be in song lyrics.

It pops up in Eric Church's "Desperate Man," from a couple years ago, but the song is a kind of throwback 70s-ish rock thing so that would make sense.

Leonard Cohen used "behoove" in a TV interview a few years ago, but I guess he's not using the word anymore.

In my recollection “behoove” was briefly trendy in the 1980s. I’m almost certain that Shelley Long said it on ‘Cheers’ and Madeline Kahn definitely said it on her short-lived sitcom. You almost have to be an ‘80s person to confidently drop that word.

Well, he was talking about Rebecca De Mornay at the time.

You almost have to be an ‘80s person to confidently drop that word.

nah, just word-nerdy

I don’t hear “erstwhile” as much as I used to

"hella" is said probably 750,000x per day in Oakland

― Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, June 24, 2021 9:41 AM (ten hours ago)

probably underestimating actually -- population of approximately 400,000 people, granted a significant percentage speak a language other than English most of the time -- let's say that's 15% -- and let's say that 1% of the population are infants who don't yet possess the ability to form words -- let's also estimate about 14% of the population are sufficiently elderly so they have never had the word "hella" in their vocabulary. That still leaves 70% of the population or 280,000 people ... no way, is hella said less than 3 times a day. Also, you should factor in people who aren't Oakland residents but happen to be in Oakland. These individuals are more likely to be younger people (say between the ages of 14 and 40) and thus more "hella prevalent"

in summary, I would posit, that "hella" is said closer to 75 million times per day in Oakland.

twin tub
courting

September 10, 1980

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/peanuts/images/e/e7/19800910.gif/

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/peanuts/images/e/e7/19800910.gif/revision/latest?cb=20140804214036

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/94/a5/3794a55dce2c526b79a39b745b9a64b5.jpg

The confusing thing about 'behoove' is that I think it means the same thing as 'behove'. I would use the latter, probably not the former. Possibly this is a UK / US distinction.

What surprises me about the thread is that my intuition would be that there would be VERY MANY words in this sad category, but almost every word that's actually cited seems to me not really to be in it.

I absolutely learned behoove from some comic strip, but it wasn't Peanuts. Feels like a Doonesbury word.

my high school principal used it a lot. but didn’t carl say “behoof”? i don’t think i’ve ever heard that.

It was only fairly recently I found out 'outwith' is Scottish, I've been using it merrily on here and irl for years, people must have wondered wtf I was on about, even more than usual that is.

Critic James Wood once scorned another critic, in print (the LRB!), for using the word 'outwith'. Wood, I think, said that this wasn't a word.

The other critic was Scottish.

This was not good from Wood.

“crusties”

skosh

cowlick

gambol

“crusties”

― Tracer Hand

Don't hear this much but do hear "crustpunks" loads, so it might be in for a resurgence.

saw a band poster once for a german band called 'beehoover', which we figured was to do with behooving rather than a hoover for bees. website doesn't given any clues.

http://beehoover.com/

according to this interview, it’s literally a “bee-hoover”, used by beekeepers to get the bees off their bodies

Ihr werdet bestimmt nicht zum ersten Mal gefragt, aber was bedeutet der Name BEEHOOVER genau?

Claus: »Während eines Englandaufenthalts erzählte mir ein Bekannter von einer Sendung über einen Imker, der sich über und über von Bienen "besetzen” ließ. Um die wieder zu entfernen, wurde ein Staubsauger benutzt – ein „bee hoover". Ich fand den Ausdruck immer witzig, also haben wir die Band so genannt.

I used the word gambol the other day.possibly for the first time.yes I was referring to a sheep

I reflect that there are words that remain in one's lexicon but one does not have cause to use very often. So they may seem like 'abandoned words' but are not.

'Gambol' may be one.

Postal Order.

Lobotomy

and probably other discredited medical interventions. You don't hear confused people described as seeming 'lobotomised' nowadays, at least not in the circles I move in.

last clause there is key for anything that i think of as having faded due to becoming obsolete or recognized as offensive within, say, my lifetime and my parents'. odds are someone out there is still using it.

Postal Order.

I just had to redeem some traveler's cheques that were buried in the belongings of a deceased acquaintance, what a palaver. Probably the last ones in existence!

I last used a traveler's check in....I wanna say, 2008?

Another one from psychiatry is “nervous breakdown.” Google results suggest the term made a mini-comeback in 2013 when Oprah Winfrey said she’d had one, but I don’t remember that.

i think this was said upthread, but connected with that: “neurotic”

As I said earlier, older medical terminology that has been superseded by newer terms forms a prime hunting grounds for once common words now seldom used.

Neurasthenic

Hoos

^makes me v sad

i guarantee you "neurotic" and "nervous breakdown" are still in wide use. maybe not in print by people being careful about their language but out there in the wide wide lexicon? absolutely. also "getting hysterical" and the misuses of "schizophrenic," etc.

i would bet there is not a standup comedian in the world who complains about their “neurotic” girlfriend now whereas you couldn’t walk two blocks in the 70s without stumbling over 3 or 4 of them at once.

you have an oddly high opinion of the up-to-dateness of stand-up comedians, imo!

"neurotic" also remains in regular radio rotation thanks to Green Day.

provost

Still in use in Scotland.

https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/lordprovost

i say it literally dozens of times a day but i work in academic administration

plenty of provosts in higher ed

my nomination is: ducky

Are we sure there aren't plenty of duckies in higher ed too?

I'm painfully aware that almost every time I open my mouth I'm using once common words people don't use anymore.

i am pretty sure, yes. first, it's an adjective and second i have worked in higher ed for years and no one says anything is ducky. partially because things are genuinely not ok in higher ed but also bc no one says this word anymore.

OK, it means something different over here!

I'm completely scattershot when it comes to dropping uncommon words into conversation, only some of which were ever in common use. The other day I was gabbing with my spouse and used 'remunerative', but when I'm hiking and meet an on-comer I'm all 'howdy there!'

when i hear a howdy i start feeling pretty remunerative

i am pretty sure, yes. first, it's an adjective and second i have worked in higher ed for years and no one says anything is ducky. partially because things are genuinely not ok in higher ed but also bc no one says this word anymore.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, May 28, 2022 7:40 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a colleague who grouses that "everything is just ducky," but she is a rare bird.

I remember my older relatives using 'queer' to mean odd and nothing else, it was a very common expression in my childhood

There was no word for gay. That wasn't talked about, ever

The children's mystery book "Something Queer Is Going On" (1973) is the only non-queer association I have ever had with the word in my life, I think. Like I really don't remember ever hearing it out loud, although that's the kind of thing where memory could be very unreliable.

The use of "queer" and "gay" in their most common contemporary use predates my birth by decades, but only within the LGBTQ community. ime, those usages didn't achieve their present dominance until I was in my 20's, after 'gay liberation' entered the mainstream consciousness.

In my world 'gay' was a term that was born in the 70s and flourished in the 80s, but I don't remember 'queer' coming into prominence until a couple of decades later

In my admittedly 'outsider' understanding, both "gay" and "queer" have evolved from a more general denotation of homosexuality during the 70's and 80's into the more specialized terms now in modern use. But when I grew up they had zero connection to homosexuality among the general population. They meant "happy and carefree" and "strange or odd", respectively.

I don't remember when I first heard the word 'gay', but I'm sure it was in the 70s and I remember even as a kid realizing that it applied to me.

I and pretty much every other gay person I knew in the 80s hated the word 'queer', it was derogatory. I know that it's been reclaimed and is not viewed that way today, but I still can't use that word

it still feels hurtful to me

I remember walking down Market Street in the 90s with a straight friend and having some yahoo screaming "queers!" at us out of their car window. I took it in stride but he was shocked and insulted

felt in the moment that he got a sense of another world he wasn't anticipating

I have never, ever heard the adjective 'ducky'.

I read loads of Enid Blyton as a kid, so gay meant happy, and queer meant slightly odd, usually with a magical connotation. I actually really love the word 'queer' in its original meaning - obviously I don't use it in conversation but it has a sort of folky otherworldly glimmering sense, to me.

(xp) It's American.

Is it? I seem to recall seeing Marlene Dietrich say it as a Cockney in Witness for the Prosecution, but maybe she was more from the Dick Van Dyke part of London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF_X20zoNJ0
Oh, but then it is not an adjective.

Yes, that's the difference.

"Don we now our gay apparel" was barely snicker-worthy in 1975 but definitely got a juvenile laugh in the 80s.

Circa 1986, at my high school, theater kids were called "drama queers" and chose to reappropriate it. We used "DQs" as a general term for ourselves and one another, regardless of identity or presentation.

(Treading carefully here) "Band fags" were a separate but adjacent group. They also chose to apply it to themselves, with varying levels of irony. A friend of mine who was president of the Sexual Minority Student Alliance referred to himself as "the head fag."

Now have a trans child in high school and the layers are... more complex and nuanced than I could possibly have imagined circa 1982.

One notable thing is that the f-word above has become utterly unspeakable. It's as unusable as the n-word. I don't miss it. No loss, as far as I am concerned, but it's an interesting development.

"Queer" as an LGBTQIA+ catchall appears to still be viable and useful, at least as far as I can tell.

“on the war path”

My third grade teacher said this all the time

I was in third grade last year

Does anybody talk about evacuating their bowels any more?

not since Mario Puzo in The Godfather novel

now everyone calls their shit BM to sound smart

Sucker strikes me as one of those words from early-80s hip hop that doesn't get used a lot nowadays. Perhaps because it sounds rude. Like the f-word (the bad f-word). Was it ever a thing?

Perhaps because my mum was born in Liverpool I remember the phrase "mad pash" when I was young, but it only has about a thousand Google hits. Which is a shame because it's very evocative.

I have a half-formed thesis about bad language in films. It goes that (a) bad language was verboten in the past, so film characters said gosh and heck and baloney and darn (b) then bad language became not just permissible but fashionable, at a time when 18-certificate / R-rated films were common and very popular, thus e.g. Goodfellas and "suck my lozenge" and "you fun my wife?" (c) but over the last thirty years or so the trend has been for 15-cert / PG-13 films, so bad language has faded away, beyond even the one-f-word-per-film rule (d) but because swearing still exists and is common in e.g. hip-hop, the likes of crap and heck etc haven't come back into fashion because they just seem absurd (e) with the result that modern PG-13 films not only don't have the bad f-word etc, they don't even have "penis breath" or "it's true that this man has no dick", they just have flat, functional dialogue with no bad language at all (f) perhaps because there's more incentive to tailor films to international audiences, where (fa) standards are tighter (fb) insults are culturally different.

For example, for all I know "penis breath" might be a term of endearment in Australia. How can I be sure? Everybody lies. So if I was writing a film for the Australian market I would leave that out. Imagine how difficult it must be writing a film that will be subtitled, where you have to be conscious of the sound of the words as well, not just their meaning.

I usually don't make it to point (f) and I've never before had to break point (f) into sub-points. You're witnessing a world first here.

is casual homophobia still prevalent in high schools these days? when I went to school everything was "gay". your teachers were gay. homework was gay. thunderstorms ruining your camping trip were gay. I even remember a webcomic that tried to coin the term "ghey" as a non-offensive pejorative (?). do teenagers still talk like that?

everything is sus now

Kenneth Williams uses "gay" in his diaries in the 1940s

"Turkey" in the sense of something that is a dud or a loser.

i say that one, but only because I'm a theatre person ,and that godawful Annie Get Your Gun was one of the first musicals I did, which features the lyric "even with a turkey that you know will fold", and that stuck with me as a 16 year old.

I'm probably the only person who still says it though.

more recently I've stopped calling plays "turkeys" and when I'm in a bad one, will just turn to the person next to me and say "are we gonna play Stonehenge tomorrow?"

Jazz Odyssey

You couldn't move for 'poseurs' in the 90s, not seen that for a while.

also Male Chauvinist Pigs

poseurs/posers is a great word

BTW, "gay" is 19th century. It was originally a general word for the sexual underground that had narrowed into a term for just the same-sex portion by 1905.

I call people posers all the time, someone has to uphold the ideals that Manowar laid out for us

Frogbs, I know a fair number of teenagers; i don't think they use it that way anymore.

But I hasten to note that all the teenagers I know are gay

I await the return of "boss" to describe something superlative, fantastic, amazing, splendid.

No, it will be “worker” instead

The children's mystery book "Something Queer Is Going On" (1973) is the only non-queer association I have ever had with the word in my life, I think. Like I really don't remember ever hearing it out loud, although that's the kind of thing where memory could be very unreliable.

― Doctor Casino

and even that book series is only _arguably_ non-queer, depending on one's opinion on whether or not children's books can be "queer-coded"

one of my favorite things is watching outtake reels from the 1930s and 1940s. most of the expletives are still in common use as expletives today, but one very much is not: "Ah, nuts!", which was clearly formerly spoken in the same context and with the same intonation as "Son of a bitch!"

there's another epithet i'd totally forgotten until i started reading the 1992 archives of the usenet group alt.transgendered. posters there complain often about being called "pantywaists". i mean, i was alive for this, i remember this, people actually called effeminate AMABs "pantywaists" in fucking _1992_. how bizarre is that?

The Hays Code literally forbade "nuts" as an interjection in Hollywood films from 1939 into the 1960s. (The word made it into some pre-1939 films).

I just watched Auntie Mame (1958) recently and in it iirc there's a gag about Mame (Rosalind Russell) almost saying it. She's characterized as having a tart tongue.

a quick search on twitter shows that "pantywaist" is still in vogue on the right

I await the return of "boss" to describe something superlative, fantastic, amazing, splendid.

Still very popular around Liverpool.

my 5 year old has been hanging out with his grandfather and now says "rats" when something doesn't go his way

my dad would say "Rats! R.. A.. T.. Z... RATZ!"

Does anything get called "crud" these days?

literally every one of my co-workers says "crud" as an substitute for an expletive and I have one friend who calls her allergies the "creeping crud" which is almost enough for me to write her out of my will if I a) had a will and b) if she had been in it to begin with

a quick search on twitter shows that "pantywaist" is still in vogue on the right

― rare lipstick or mohawks that somehow make them more valuable (President Keyes)

maybe it's taken seriously regionally, or something. or maybe it's just another "the right being completely out of touch with reality" thing, idk.

creeping crud is a contagious disease, c'mon coworker

so let it be written
so let it be done
i've got a case of creeping crud

Frogbs, I know a fair number of teenagers; i don't think they use it that way anymore.

But I hasten to note that all the teenagers I know are gay

― Nutellanor Roosevelt (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, June 22, 2022 8:18 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

hah

just speaking from personal experience but I'm amazed how many teens I meet now who are openly queer in some direction, I mean good for them obviously but this also means a lot of the people I went to high school with were also that way but couldn't express it or be open about it. I have a couple friends/acquaintances who are struggling with their identity right now which strikes me as not what you wanna be doing in your 30s

friends with benefits should be replaced by friends without obligations to mean the opposite, a far more privileged status

"i say that one, but only because I'm a theatre person ,and that godawful Annie Get Your Gun was one of the first musicals I did, which features the lyric "even with a turkey that you know will fold", and that stuck with me as a 16 year old.

I'm probably the only person who still says it though.

― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal)"

with god as my witness, i thought turkeys could fly

now _that_ one, nobody fucking remembers that anymore

"Frogbs, I know a fair number of teenagers; i don't think they use it that way anymore.

But I hasten to note that all the teenagers I know are gay

― Nutellanor Roosevelt (Ye Mad Puffin)"

oh god not _quite_ on topic for thread but i love so much the way kids these days use the term "gay panic". when they use it it's like "i'm a disaster lesbian and this girl is super fucking hot and i'm mentally keysmashing trying to figure out how to tell her how hot she is". god, i know the us is a dystopia and the world is a pile of shit and things have literally never been as brutal for trans people as they are now but i'm still so fucking _happy_, one might say _gay_ even, over stuff like that.

Apparently my use of the word “necking” (to mean extended, passionate kissing) marks me firmly as a Gen-X-er, as firmly as the use of “groovy” might mark a certain kind of boomer. I had no idea it wasn’t in circulation anymore.

it's called neckflix and chilling now

Is 'snogging' still a term in use (I guess in the UK only)?

Apparently my use of the word “necking” (to mean extended, passionate kissing) marks me firmly as a Gen-X-er, as firmly as the use of “groovy” might mark a certain kind of boomer. I had no idea it wasn’t in circulation anymore.

is 'scromping' still a word

I don't think I've heard anyone refer to making out as "necking" since the 1990s. These days, I think of it more in the British (?) sense of pouring a bottle of alcohol down your throat.

One notable thing is that the f-word above has become utterly unspeakable. It's as unusable as the n-word. I don't miss it. No loss, as far as I am concerned, but it's an interesting development.

"Queer" as an LGBTQIA+ catchall appears to still be viable and useful, at least as far as I can tell.

― I am just a squirrel in the world (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, May 29, 2022 5:20 AM (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just want to point out that this is perhaps true for your queer child, YMP, but my fag friends and I toss around the "f" word all the time, because we're fucking faggots and damn proud of it, too.

I mean, really, it's one of those words that has been reclaimed by those it was initially meant to oppress, tho there is some disagreement about the validity of the reclamation. If I'm around queer people, I'll use it without thinking about it, but that's because I don't fuck with tenderqueer language police types and anyone who'd get annoyed at me for using the word "fag" or "faggot" isn't someone I want to know, anyway.

Apparently my use of the word “necking” (to mean extended, passionate kissing) marks me firmly as a Gen-X-er,

I think it's even more specific than that because I'm sort of a central gen-X-er and that usage to me is definitely "I know what it means but it's a little old-fashioned and I wouldn't say it myself." I am of the "making out" age cohort.

is anyone in a real pickle anymore?

I just want to point out that this is perhaps true for your queer child, YMP, but my fag friends and I toss around the "f" word all the time, because we're fucking faggots and damn proud of it, too.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table)

for me that word is one of the challenging ones. i still struggle sometimes over whether i can call myself a "dyke". there are some words within the trans community that cause similar amounts of strife, including, interestingly enough, "transsexual".

i'm late gen-x and i'm definitely of the "hey wanna make out" persuasion

"is anyone in a real pickle anymore?

― Andy the Grasshopper"

only if we're on spiro

There should be a special category for "once-common words people don’t use anymore, but which you adopted at some point as an affectation, and then accidentally made it part of your normal speech," which for me includes both saying "in a pickle" and greeting people with "howdy"

kate, fwiw, one of my best friends edited the Lou Sullivan diaries, and he and i have had some long conversations about the word and how some people become upset when he uses it— but he still identifies as a trans faggot. I’m not trans, but I understand why ymmv regarding the “f” word or the “d” word— my main thing is that self-identification is really important when thinking about language in this way, and I am definitely not “gay” and feel somewhat estranged from current use of the word “queer” except as a general umbrella term. so, for me, fag or faggot it is.

Graduated from high school in ‘86 so I’m deeply Gen-X, and I can state confidently that I’ve never used the expression “necking,” nor can I imagine my peers doing so. It sounds very ‘50s/‘60s to my ears. Maybe we’re talking about a regional difference?

It was always “making out” ftr

yeah i wanna be clear i'm not saying you're doing anything wrong for self-IDing as.. look i'm gonna put one of those spoilers in because i'm gonna get heavy into direct discussion of slurs:

(i'll just say the word a "faggot", i got a friend (who incidentally is a _huge_ fan of the lou sullivan diaries, really inspired by them) who does call herself a "tranny" and i'm 100% behind that, she's reclaiming a term of abuse, she'll really engage with a lot of these idea of reclamation, "brick", "trannyfag", you name it, there's room for that. just - and you know One Thread, this dovetails with my last post to the LGBTQ+ kids thread - to state the obvious, i would take offense if anybody called me personally a "fag" or a "faggot".

"necking" sounds like something from Laverne & Shirley, or American Graffiti

definitely something one does at the malt shop or the drive-in while listening to an early beach boys song

and 'heavy petting' happens at lover's lane

It's funny, the East Bay Hills are chock-full of old lover's lanes - i.e. overlook parking lots with faint parking spot paint, a view of the valley, etc... but they're almost all blocked off and now have tall eucalyptus trees obscuring whatever view used to be there. Not sure why they became obsolete, maybe it's the Zodiac Killer's fault

I don’t know if Brits still use the word snogging but even here in the USA, anyone whose kids have read the Harry Potter books have certainly had their share of that word

Also, all the kids who watched Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging on Nickelodeon.

still refuse to believe that snogging is not a thing you do with your nose

I mean ya CAN

Angus Thongs & Perfect Snogging is the greatest film of all time

we used to call them... ah, shit, the thing we used to call them is probably racist too? and it'd probably still be racist even if i swapped out the words because i don't know that the inuit and/or first peoples actually snog that way

think my secondary school days coincide exactly with harry potter's (1990-1997) and I don't think I heard anyone say "snogging", it was always "getting off (with)" (not that I did any of this during this time, or much at uni for that matter) - just yet another way that JKR's squeamish descriptions of teenage sexuality in 90s Britain are bad and wrong.

"Common Law"

xxxp Is there a quote from Jane Fonda in I think Klute along the lines of 'I don't know how to kiss what do you do with the noses?'
remember it but can't find it. May have film wrong but makes sense since it's rumoured to be a thing that prostitutes don't do with customers.

It's Ingrid Bergman in For Whom The Bell Tolls
"For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

"Where Do the Noses Go?"

Director Sam Wood's film was a version of Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same name, set in Spain during its civil war in 1937.

Before an ill-fated ending, the two main characters experienced a famous kissing scene between them:

expatriate American demolition expert and mercenary Robert "Ingles" Jordan (Gary Cooper), fighting with the anti-fascist Republican (or Loyalist) guerrillas against Franco's nationalistic forces
blue-eyed, short-haired, innocent, rescued peasant woman Maria (Ingrid Bergman), a victim of the conflict

After he cradled her head, she laughed as she told him:

"I like - I don't know how to kiss or I would kiss you. Where do the noses go? Always I wonder where the noses will go. (He gave her a quick peck on the lips) They're not in the way, are they? I always thought they would be in the way. (She kissed him) Look, I can do it myself. (She kissed him again)...Oh, did I do it wrong?"

To prove that she was kissing him correctly, he grabbed her for another kiss."

the Klute thing I may be confusing it with cos it was on the same page of quotes when I saw it is the thing about her offering Donald Sutherland a Freebie and how you could get a perfectly good dishwasher for that.

snog and get off with were both used in the 90s ime although more the latter than the former.

when I was in Dublin in 1996 a girl asked me if I knew what "snogging" was because she thought it was Irish slang that I wouldn't understand (this wasn't a veiled attempt at a chat up line - the context was she was talking to the group about someone snogging someone else)

gett snogged, twenty-three positions in a one-night stand

I thought the Irish used to use the word scone in a similar way to snog, may have been a more localised thing, Do remember it being used when I was in Galway in 90 and I think in Dublin a couple of years later.
Looks like the word shift which is also interrelated may have been more innocent or whatever than I thought. I was thinking of it as had sex with, may have been more got off with. But I'm not sure how these terms translate to a different understanding like bases or similar.

there may have been a shift in meaning with "get off with" yeah - when I was a teenager I told my mum about someone getting off with someone at a party and she thought it meant sex.

As a Yank, I think I first heard the term shift in Rubberbandits song Horse Outside.

I thought the Irish used to use the word scone in a similar way to snog, may have been a more localised thing, Do remember it being used when I was in Galway in 90 and I think in Dublin a couple of years later.
Looks like the word shift which is also interrelated may have been more innocent or whatever than I thought. I was thinking of it as had sex with, may have been more got off with. But I'm not sure how these terms translate to a different understanding like bases or similar.

I grew up with the word "winch" in Scotland, which I always found rather unpleasant. I assume it's from "wench", I'm not sure if that makes it worse.

“pashing” and especially “pash rash” will flush out the gen X Aussies

and 'heavy petting' happens at lover's lane

Also in UK swimming pools

In Minnesota in the early 90s my midwestern college peers said “scamming” meant “making out” (I think, but I’m still not clear) and it confused me as an east coaster.

—-said “scamming” in place of “making out”—

then there are all those old songs that use "making love" to describe what i'd think of as "making out", it used to really confuse me how songs as explicit as that could get popular

my favorite example of semantic shift is the way "cock" used to refer to the female pudenda in african-american vernacular - this is the sense in which it's used in "rotten cocksucker's ball". i'm definitely here for lucille bogan singing about her cock!

'stoned' for drunk, that's old school

It's better than drinking alone

Getting your end away

there's also the term "make whoopee" which always makes me laugh, because who the hell came up with that? did some guy who was getting laid in the 50's yell out "whoopee!!" one time?

1920s, more like. "Makin' whoopee" is old.

I like "tight" for oldschool drunk terms...

Cockeyed

I hate the term 'necking' and associate it with Alan Partridge describing Bond

Jack London always talked about being 'jingled' for drunk, which is pretty good

‘tight’ is my favorite of those terms, too, tho i never use it.

Reminds me: is there a replacement for "uptight"? I can't think of what would be adequate, in a contemporary way. Last time I heard "anal" was in, "Don't get anal about the wordcount," which was advised by Chuck Eddy at the Voice, so a while back.
Oh yeah, "uptight" and xpost Jack London and xpost 1905 use of "gay" reminds me of "Baked beans! Out of sight!" said by someone at a boarding house table, in a turn-of-the-century Jack book.
(R.Crumb got "Keep on Truckin'" from his collection of very vintage 78s.)
Speaking of music writers, haven't noticed one using "albeit" in a while, and don't miss it---but does it have a shade of meaning missed by "although"?

xp - yeah, I don't use it myself but I always enjoy hearing it in old films or such...

xp - yeah, I don't use it myself but I always enjoy hearing it in old films or such...

Don't people still say uptight to mean uptight? Certainly more than I hear "anal" anymore.

Hope so!

At the time of the Stevie Wonder song, did "uptight" mean something like "got everything sewn up correctly"? Because he seems to be unusually excited about being anxious and repressed.

"Tighten Up" probably also related.

yeah, he seemed to mean like, "tighten up/shipshape'---never heard anybody else use "uptight" in that way, rhyming with "out of sight," even!

'stoned' for drunk, that's old school

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, June 29, 2022 1:10 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also, stoned in the 1960s for tripping on acid.

"Uptight" went from a negative word, meaning "tense," in the 1930s, to a positive one, meaning "out of sight," in the early '60s, before whiplashing back to its negative connotation in the late '60s.

There were multimedia performances with the Velvet Underground promoted under the name "Andy Warhol's Up-Tight" in early '66, perhaps playing on the double connotation of the word.

then there are all those old songs that use "making love" to describe what i'd think of as "making out",

I don't know if "making love" ever meant "making out". In old movies it always means "hitting on" or "courting" or otherwise developing a romantic relationship. As in this exchange from Horse Feathers (1932):

Frank : Dad wants me to give you up. You know, you're interfering with my studies.
Connie : Ha-ha-ha. He must think I'm terrible.
Frank : But I think you're wonderful. You're beautiful.
Connie : Are you making love to me?

In Minnesota in the early 90s my midwestern college peers said “scamming” meant “making out” (I think, but I’m still not clear) and it confused me as an east coaster.

My memory of the early 90s was that to "scam on" someone was synonymous with "hitting on" them; I never heard "scam" without the on used to mean "make out." But who knows what they were up to in the Midwest.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=suet&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csuet%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Csuet%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=creosote&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccreosote%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chilblains&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cchilblains%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hanker&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chanker%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pocketbook&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpocketbook%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=skedaddle&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cskedaddle%3B%2Cc0

Writing may differ from speech

Have vague memories of saying 'laced' for drunk/high... and weirdly, maybe 'draced'? Maybe that was a local thing.

Blootered
Steamin'/ Steamboats
Away wi' it
Stocious
Paraletic (sp?)
Miroclous (sp?) etc

You probably not be surprised to hear there are dozens of words in Scotland for being drunk. However I'm not sure how many of them are still in use, the last time I was up "mortal" seemed to be in vogue. And "goosed".

“shitpiled” was my favorite local term in the early 90s.

“pashing” and especially “pash rash” will flush out the gen X Aussies

LOL sorry Matt I'm late to the party, was just coming here to say this one. Honestly it feels like theres loads of Aussie slang from the 70s that americans peobably thing we still say but we just dont, like struth and crikey and pash.

And "rack off".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAgIFeq72oM

the word we (kids/Herefordshire/80s) used to use all the time was "skill" (adj) (or sometimes even "skilliant") - the only time I've heard it anywhere else is in Son of Rambow

I don't think "skilliant" was a thing but "skill" definitely was in Worcester in the 80s

I think "ace" hung on a bit longer

until "wicked" took over

surely not another middle-aged Worcester person on here! (unless you are colonel poo with a new name)

I think 'skill' made a brief appearance round our way but it seemed a bit affected.

Skill very popular where I grew up in west London in the early 80s. Favourite morphing of the phrase was 'skillage in the village'.

i remember "i am skill!" in shropshire in the early 70s

People don't seem to 'chip off' any more (i.e. leaving), that was a big north London thing in the 80s, probably the rest of London too

Do UK people still use 'et' for 'ate'?

Depends where you are in the UK I would imagine.

Do UK people still use 'et' for 'ate'?

I didn't even realize that was a UK thing; I thought it was a Boston/Maine thing, because I think I first encountered it in Jaws (the book) and then later in Stephen King.

I think "ace" hung on a bit longer

― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism)

until "wicked" took over

― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism)

both peak sophie aldred

I didn't even realize that was a UK thing; I thought it was a Boston/Maine thing, because I think I first encountered it in Jaws (the book) and then later in Stephen King.

New England.

wait there's a New England??

Afternoon is just another cinema showtime anymore.

I once texted a young person about "catching a matinee", and they thought it was a typo of some joke about an aquatic mammal.

Never heard 'et' or 'chipping off'.

It’s 23 for all of you; I’ll get tight & make out on the chesterfield with my squeeze if I want to.

Tight as an owl?

Tight is a word my parents used to use. Getting tight at the rugger club dance. Does anyone still say "rugger" apart from my dad?

Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

xp I take it rugger originated at the same time as Soccer and for pretty much the same reasons, like in fact those were the 2 choices.
ONe has become a pretty much technical term for a game and the other has become an archaism with certain class association.
Actually maybe that's 2 main choices with another load of forms of football more localised.

In Minnesota in the early 90s my midwestern college peers said “scamming” meant “making out” (I think, but I’m still not clear) and it confused me as an east coaster.

"Scamming" meaning "making out" was a hallmark of late '80s/early '90s South Florida/

'Skill' was still around in the early '90s (Midlands UK).

Only ever really heard 'rugger' in the context of the derogatory phrase 'rugger buggers', indicating posh wankers who play rugby.

'Et' for 'ate' I always thought was just an accent thing rather than a separate word?

Tight is a word my parents used to use. Getting tight at the rugger club dance. Does anyone still say "rugger" apart from my dad?

"I felt a little tight" already seemed old-fashioned when Was (Not Was) used it in "Walk the Dinosaur". Fortunately, they followed that up with an up-to-the-minute Miami Vice reference.

The greatest use of "tight" ever is the way Katherine Hepburn delivers the line, "Unlike my husband, I'd rather be tight than be president."

(State of the Union)

_In Minnesota in the early 90s my midwestern college peers said “scamming” meant “making out” (I think, but I’m still not clear) and it confused me as an east coaster._

"Scamming" meaning "making out" was a hallmark of late '80s/early '90s South Florida/

Circa 1992 I heard "scamming on" and guessed that it meant something like "pursuing" or "wooing."

This would have probably been Northeast / Midatlantic collegiate dialect. Spoken in a rough trapezoid bounded by Ithaca, Boston, Chapel Hill, Harrisonburg? Therefore including Princeton, Wellesley, New Haven, Charlottesville, Williamsburg, etc. I don't think it was ever in my vernacular.

But around the same time I remember a separate term, "scope." Like, a "scope" was someone you admired from afar, purely based on their look or fashion sense or vibe or social circle or whatever. The rules seemed to be that you couldn't approach a scope directly. You could not stalk a scope. It was out of bounds to try to figure out their class schedule or their dorm or whatever.

BUT if events transpired so that you met a scope at a party, or you were introduced by mutual friends, then you could proceed as normal to scam on your scope.

Ugh, just typing this stuff out makes me cringe. So glad to be out of that world.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=churlish&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3#
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/churlish

Where I am, "churlish not to" was the next step after "rude not to".

the mp on the radio just this morning said it would be churlish to stop the prime minister having that wedding party at chequers next month because so many other people had had their wedding parties disrupted by COVID. which is exactly the same, obviously

but, yeah, people do still say churlish

The cad.

I'm not Churlish, I'm American

I'm not a churl
Not yet a curmudgeon

Nor a misanthrope

Possibly a crank

I'm not Churlish, I'm American

I hear the Churlish American community is pretty large.

He was an American Churl.

Living with an uptown churl

speaking of which does uptown churl still post?

I came across the word in a NYT article. There was a quote from a classics instructor about Johnson's perception of his instructors or peers, so I knew it was still in use (and the usage seemed apt). I don't hear it used much, but I think I'd still be understood and could attempt a revival here.

I am just a churl in the world

Why do young people come up with new words? Not to be understood by their parents? For the joy of naming?

Are there enough alternate ways to say covet? It seems to be on a stable trajectory. It would be interesting to see long-lasting words, not only nouns, without explicit referential or syntactical function.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=covet&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3

joy of naming/in-group vs out-group word use imo

a friend was talking about her college-aged students calling songs “a bop” and it’s funny because that’s definitely regional slang (and also old timey) that’s disseminated via social media

the extent to which language is social fascinates me, and the extent to which internet culture influences slang also fascinates me. my ex is very fond of using the word "shirty", for instance, which i think is some archaic form of uk slang? i'm personally very fond of "naff", which i saw being used on usenet back in the '90s and has stuck with me. the whole idea of "stanning", how many people these days know the etymology of that word? i didn't for a long time. i thought it had to do with post-soviet balkanization. no, seriously. and the cultural context matters too. "moderate" is a dirty word these days, so people say "nuanced" now instead. i'm not going to say i "covet" something because covetousness is a sin. two sins, actually, in the christian denomination i grew up in.

i actually see "ope" surprisingly often on discord these days - this wasn't a word i ever heard anybody use when i actually _lived_ in the midwest, and i think it's only a matter of time for it to spread outside the midwest. i kept "y'all" in my vocabulary after moving away from kentucky - well before it became a preferred form of gender neutral address, it was a regular part of my vocabulary.

I get irrationally irritated when I see people claim that "ope" is a thing which is hilarious because... I totally say it irl?

I've never typed it in my life, as far as I can remember. Definitely a verbal exclamation that doesn't map to writing in my brain

I think I'd type "oops" or "welp" instead, which are probably just as laden with cultural weight

i kept "y'all" in my vocabulary after moving away from kentucky - well before it became a preferred form of gender neutral address, it was a regular part of my vocabulary.

I feel like y'all stopped being a Southern thing in the late '80s when LA rappers started popularizing it.

Did "whiz" stop being a euphemism for urination after the 70s, or is it just that I grew out of the age range that uses the term?

i'm personally very fond of "naff", which i saw being used on usenet back in the '90s and has stuck with me.

Very 70s UK.

I just saw the word “toper” for drunkard. I don’t know it’s ever been common, but ngram suggests some dropoff since uh, 1900 with brief relative spike in early 00s. Stay current, moralists and boozers.

I think I'd type "oops" or "welp" instead, which are probably just as laden with cultural weight

― mh

see, i think of "welp" as being specifically the midwestern word for "i am going to take my leave now"

i remember saying "i'm gonna take a whiz" when i was growing up in the '80s, so it lasted at least that long. i don't know what the slang term for micturition is now. i think it's just "piss"?

I have a friend who still uses 'whiz'. 'Slash' is just as popular as ever. No-one under 60 says 'leak' or refers to 'breaking the seal'.

A lot of words we used for a foolish person when I was a kid appear to have fallen out of use, or at least, I never hear anyone use them IRL *or* on TV.

Pillock, twit, wally, prat - that kind of thing.

... a Jimmy Riddle. Seriously though, does anyone do rhyming slang anymore?

I just saw the word “toper” for drunkard

Funnily I have too, as the solution to a crossword clue in the Observer.

Re: rhyming slang, no, probably not, apart from 'butcher's' for a look and a number of words where they don't realise that it is, e,g
'Cobblers' (awls = balls)

when we were kids we would drink koolaid all day and then gather round the ol pepole and just whizz and whizz
― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, April 27, 2004 2:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

pate

words I like that are still in use: mull, hull, cull

null, sully

ruly (the words above are words I like that are still in use)

"i'm personally very fond of "naff", which i saw being used on usenet back in the '90s and has stuck with me."

In the UK naff is indelibly associated with Princess Anne, who was quoted at least once asking photographers to naff off. You have to pronounce it narf orf. It's hard to explain Princess Anne for a US audience.

Naff is one of those words that's still used in print frequently. Albeit that it's mostly used in the "shoddy" sense, e.g. "that's a bit naff". For example this headline from last year:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jul/26/bring-it-all-back-why-naff-noughties-pop-is-suddenly-cool-again

I use it every so often, in a self-conscious way. I would never use it sincerely, though, e.g. if I had to tell someone that their son had been hit by a car and killed. I would say "it was well minging" instead.

Also super, as in "he was super serious" or "this is super simple", seemed to peak a few years ago, but it has been a while since I last saw it deployed in anger. I've always thought that it sounded patronising, as if you were lecturing a small child.

Guy at work had an operation on his eye and said it had left him with a shiner - a word I don't recall hearing in a very long time.

He needed to put a steak on it! Or possibly just some ice, but a cut of meat has more of a Bash Street Kids feel to it.

You have to pronounce it narf orf.

neff orf iirc.

In the UK naff is indelibly associated with Princess Anne

not sure about this tbh. first I've heard of it anyway

I still say naff but I've never said 'naff off'

I also say 'infra dig' but feel more conscious about this.

https://naffco54.com/

Naff was always more common than naff off. In fact wasn't naff off invented by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais to replace fuck off in "Porridge"?

Yes, but coming back to rhyming slang they popularised berk as well. Naff's origins are in polari I think.

They certainly didn't popularize berk, berk was always popular! Instead they came up with "nerk", which never really took off.

berk is rhyming slang, short for berkshire hunt

(tho i guess nerk is also rhyming slang) (rhymes with berk)

in the early 90s there was a popular clothing brand called "Naf Naf" and I could not understand how it was fashionable at school to wear clothes that literally said "naff" on the front.

Yes and Naff Co 54, which I posted. It explains they were big in the 90s and relaunched in 2018...
There was a stupid rhyme at our school about it.

berk is rhyming slang, short for berkshire hunt

was originally Berkeley hunt

'Peevish' seems to continue its decades long decline, which is unfortunate as nothing else comes close

don’t be surprised if “Gee whiz, I’m feeling peevish” is on its way to becoming the hot new slang for micturition (a word I learned today) somewhere in the Anglosphere this very moment.

i saw a pic today of someone from their "fragrance launch" and started to wonder if anybody uses "fragrance launch" as a euphemism for farting

lol

Guy at work had an operation on his eye and said it had left him with a shiner - a word I don't recall hearing in a very long time.

― Eavis Has Left the Building (Tom D.)

you say "shiner" i'll say "bock"

I still use "welp" as campy shrug, like "anyhoo," but less irritating hopefully, although think the heyday of "welp" was maybe 2014, when I first went on Twitter, is that right?
Do people still say "hurl" meaning "puke"? I'm a hurlin' churl, sometimes.

moue

"in the early 90s there was a popular clothing brand called "Naf Naf" and I could not understand how it was fashionable at school to wear clothes that literally said "naff" on the front."

That reminded me of SMEG, the homeware manufacturer. I remember seeing a window display of some neat-looking kettles - they were ace - but the design was ruined by the SMEG logo. It's apparently an acronym for Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla. I can't imagine storing mayonnaise in a fridge with SMEG on the front. Or pouring boiling water into a cup of mac and cheese if the kettle has a SMEG logo.

The thing is that I don't remember smeg, smeghead etc actually being a real insult when I was young, in the 1980s. Smeghead was invented for Red Dwarf, and I can remember seeing that show when it was brand new. I always had the impression it was supposed to mimic rudeness but in 1988 "smeg" was pretty odd (the substance is smegma), so it sounded less rude to the producers at the BBC than it sounded to the audience.

Does that make sense? e.g. one episode of Fawlty Towers begins with the hotel's sign re-arranged so that it says "flowery twats", which is obviously really rude nowadays, but in 1975 twat was pretty obscure. Not just the word but the actual thing. It very rarely appeared on television. You could still talk about "twatting someone about the head" in the 1980s without it sounding rude. Nowadays that would mean hitting someone on the head with a vagina, but in the 1980s it just meant hitting someone with a newspaper or a paper cup or something.

Git, that's another insult that doesn't get used a lot nowadays. There's a wealth of British slang from the 1970s and 1980s that has been largely forgotten today, partially because it was crap, partially because the internet tends to document US slang instead (e.g. "gag me with a spoon", "totally", "grody to the max") as if that was a universal constant, and partially because we're talking about subcultures of an objectively very small culture that no longer had a global reach outside a few small contexts. One of which was rock music, but the few British acts that played up their Britishness - most obviously Madness - didn't have much cultural clout outside the UK.

But perhaps there's a whole generation of people in Egypt and India who grew up with "Night Boat to Cairo" and "One Step Beyond". Who knows.

First of all you tell us "naff" is indelibly associated with Princess Anne and now "twat" was obscure in 1975. I think your imagination is getting the better of you.

Grody rules. No “to the max” reqd.

Pretty sure I first heard what'twat' meant at uni in 1989 or 1990. There were plenty of slang words for pudenda that I would've used as a teenager. Fanny, minge, radge, snatch, axe wound...anything but twat.

I've just remembered it's actually used in "Blazing Saddles"!

"Right foul git" was used in a Harry Potter movie

Sounds like an anagram.

Fanny, minge, radge, snatch, axe wound...anything but twat.

--Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Twat"

lol

clunge

good story (which some probably know) abt the variable knownness of the word "twat" down the centuries (via etymonline of course)

The T-word occupies a special niche in literary history, however, thanks to a horrible mistake by Robert Browning, who included it in 'Pippa Passes' (1841) without knowing its true meaning. 'Then owls and bats,/Cowls and twats,/Monks and nuns,/In a cloister's moods.' Poor Robert! He had been misled into thinking the word meant 'hat' by its appearance in 'Vanity of Vanities,' a poem of 1660, containing the treacherous lines: 'They'd talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They'd send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat.' (There is a lesson here about not using words unless one is very sure of their meaning.) [Hugh Rawson, "Wicked Words," 1989]

I first heard it in the late 60s, when mum and dad -- then young adults -- were giggling with one another bcz one of them (almost certainly mum) had said it in my hearing, so they thought, and they had to explain what it meant (poorly explained iirc) and why it was bad for me to say. somehow unlike my mum and my sister i didn't swear much at all as a youngun so i guess the second element they achieved…

then at school as a teen i began hearing it again, used as a mocking insult one lad at another rather than the old nun sense above. curiously at school it was always said to rhyme with "hat" whereas mum and dad said it to rhyme with "squat"…

etymonline also has a strong story abt git, from 1706 in scotland, where one gregor burgess "protested against the said Allane that called him a witch gyt or bratt"

i'd like to know if browning ever realised his error tho

My dad also says it to rhyme with squat. I, like many other people I think, thought of it as akin to twit and didn’t learn THE TRUE MEANING till I went to university, I think.

It wasn’t actually on the syllabus.

browning is out of fashion academically

my parents mistook this word to mean “butt”, and therefore used it fairly liberally until i guess they found out because i haven’t heard it from them in years

i'd like to know if browning ever realised his error tho

According to Bill Bryson d Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining his mistake to him. (citation needed)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/735078-the-poet-robert-browning-caused-considerable-consternation-by-including-the

I skipped the second “it” on first reading of your post, Tracer, and thought: wow, embarrassment has never hit me quite that hard.

lol

*giggle*

now enjoying my very made-up picture of the victorian literary world, with the victorian ashley pomeroys saying "lol lol lol browning but tbf it is a very obscure old word" and the victorian tom ds telling them that actually everyone knows it perfectly well (except apparently browning)

Am now deep into oblivious Victorian uses of twat

https://i.imgur.com/4GS9JzE.jpg

Exploration of Twat

https://i.imgur.com/UhaAXVW.jpg

Gerhard Rolfs: spent over a month in the Twat

What a story though

One to tell the kids..

...In the Twat, as a Mussulman
Don't stop till you get enough

Wikipedia also mentions a "traveling-wave amplifier tube". Which leads me to this page, which has a good example of comedy that uses negative space as a punchline:
https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Traveling_wave_tube.html

"A TWT has sometimes been referred to as a traveling wave amplifier tube (TWAT), although this term has fallen out of use."

My own mother called me a 'twerp' yesterday and I thought of this thread. And then I thought of Kurt Vonnegut:

INTERVIEWER

What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?

VONNEGUT

It’s a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.

Thanks, mum.

I was wondering earlier what word could best be substituted for twat. Twerp, while obviously milder to most non-Browning ears, is probably it.

ooh i don't agree with that at all, they're *very* different, twerp has much less vehement hostility and is also (if used affectionately) less affectionate

i ilx-searched twerp to see if anyone uses it except me (ans = yes) or as often as me (ans = daver popshots uses it a lot also)

Divided by a common insult.

when I was a kid in the 80's someone reprimanded me for using "twat" told me it meant I was calling them a pregnant fish

I think once you reach a certain age it’s harder to be a twerp. Elon Musk can still be a twerp and a twat. Kelvin MacKenzie is just a twat.

I was told a prat was a pregnant fish.

Twerp definitely much gentler* than twat, and essentially floats free of any meaning beyond 'a bit of a wally' (see also 'numpty').

*certainly when deployed by my mum.

tubular (Also, do you live in a country other than France that uses a comma as a decimal point? Do you know how this difference came to be?)

Does anyone say full stop anymore or was that just from the age of telegrams?

I used "full stop" at the end of an article last week!

https://www.stereogum.com/2191562/baroness-yellow-and-green-turns-10/reviews/the-anniversary/

Always assumed”twunt” was an ilx portmaneau, but now words don’t “mean” anything

i think twunt might come from b3ta or possibly before that. it's not from ilx though, just general UK internet

full stop is just British for period so yes it's used all the time

maiden/maid (the latter for anything other than a housecleaner, and even for that becoming less common).

You still hear maiden all the time if you're a cricket fan!

don't forget about twit

twit was roughly equivalent to dipshit afaik

There were plenty of slang words for pudenda that I would've used as a teenager. Fanny, minge, radge, snatch, axe wound...anything but twat.

^^^ revived by the first Avengers movie in 2012!

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=facepalm

what happened to smdh. bring it back.

not come across a 429 error before. JUst got one there. So think I might need to start using an alternative to google.

lmao still hanging on but rofl is in really bad shape these days, sad to see. when was the last time someone even roflmaoed?

I miss pmsl which I thought had real potential but afaict it never spread much beyond UK teens on bebo and myspace

I am very glad the cutesy internet speak of late 00s / early 10s (interwebs etc) seems to be almost extinct though because that shit got unbearable for a while

I was struck by this article a couple of days in the newspaper about a feud between George Best and Bobby Charlton:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/aug/10/the-feud-between-best-and-charlton-that-shattered-manchester-united

Quoth Bobby, "so many young people on the ‘scene’ have the attitude that nearly everything and ordinary people are ‘sick’. They behave as if the peak of senility is reached at the age of 25 and they must wring every drop out of life by then whether they offend other people or not.” (Bobby) goes on to attack those who insist on being “cool”, “gas” and “with it”."

It's interesting how "sick" has come full circle.

Did people use "vouchsafe"? Shakespeare loves it.

Reminds me of a Proust translation where the literal "He did not respond" became "He vouchsafed no answer" in English.

“beetling” to mean looming, jutting up etc most commonly used with eyebrows but have also read it in conjunction with hills, cliffs

Jordan Peterson seems to be the only person in the world who still says "up yours"

Not really the right thread but I couldn’t find a better one:

“Invincible” is pretty common word but in all my 43 years, despite being a big reader, I’ve never heard or seen the word “vincible” until today.

dasn’t

I love dasn’t, and talked about it on some other thread once. It was one of my grandma’s common admonishments.

Never heard of it. What does it mean? How was it used?

It’s a contraction of “dares not.” Grandma used to say, “you dasn’t do that!”

oh! i spell it like dursn't

ppl do still say durst (if they're pretending to be gandalf)

or dissing Christina Aguilara

time for an RIP Fetterman thread

Dasn't is a contraction of dare not [...] "Ah," you say, "but where in the world does that s come from?" Well, for one thing, dare had an old past tense form durst (still occurring in some dialects), and a second person singular present-tense form darst, pronounced (dairst).

'When you durst do it, then you were a man'.

lady macbeth pretending to be gandalf (the core of her motivation IMO)

I remember that previous thread with the mentions of dasn't! It seems to me I spoke up about remembering seeing it in "Tom Sawyer" or "Huckleberry Finn"

I don't hear about people getting "perturbed" anymore. I guess anything less than a seething rage isn't worth mentioning.

Yeah, I can't remember the last time I was properly miffed...

I'm in a constant state of miffage

“There, there.”

When I was a child, everyone knew what a chesterfield was.

Contraband

mien

“Blow”

as in “scram”

"Jive" had a good 10-year run, from roughly '75 to '85.

I said perturbed today! I wasn't angry or irked, just concerned in a way that made me feel frustrated. Was I using this word incorrectly?

My contribution to the thread: any variation on "hey, what's the big idea?" or "what is this, a gag?"

resolved to start saying "i daresay" instead of "i guess" or "i suppose"

it's been a long, long time since I heard anyone called a wally.

also hoping for a chance to tell someone "you can shove it up your jacksie"

gonna say that to the next wally i meet

Henpecked.

“Blow”

as in “scram”

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

hey buddy, go screw

No soap.

is the word "galoot" still in common usage?

i also kind of like words that come back into usage in new contexts. i remember, when i was young, hearing people talking about the 'tism, meaning rheumatism. in the last couple years, i've seen people start talking about the 'tism, meaning autism. i'm certain the revival is a bit of a tip of the hat to the original term, but i still think it's cool.

is the word "galoot" still in common usage?

Sadly, it is not. I like the word "oaf" — especially in its adjectival form, "oafish".

I miss "tricknology".

Old-tymey physical maladies are the bomb. Dropsy, consumption, lumbago, the vapors.

Dropsy is edema, consumption is TB, lumbago is lower back pain, and the vapors is gas.

i will say i think "edema" is a great word. "dropsy" sounds like a VST plugin. i do think the word "lumbago" had a great sound to it.

galoot made me think of the word "palooka", which i think predates the "joe palooka" comic (which nobody remembers these days anyway). just a great word, "palooka". something about that "oo" sound does it for me.

do people use "acid" in the sense of... someone being described as having an "acid wit"? the thing i run into is that a lot of words are just regional - a word might not be "obsolete", it's just not in common usage where I live.

i've love to see some kind of chart where... google has these usage charts where you can see the popularity of a phrase rise and fall, but it's usually over the short term. i'm kind of interested in knowing statistically what words have experienced the most precipitous decline in usage compared to its usage in the previous 100 years. the rust belt of words, if you will.

do people say "happenstance" anymore? they just say coincidence or chance. its a solid word though.

I think some australians might still say "ya big galoot!". Not often though, its like "flamin galah" or "crikey". It is mostly said ironically now if at all.

reading old rock mags from the late 70s am reminded of "ligger" (freeloader, perpetual hanger-out-on-the-scene, looking for the party after the gig kind of guy) & the verb to "number" somebody (to do a take-down job on them. as in i guess "i've got his number")

"mr bond they have a saying in chicago: 'once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it's enemy action'”
— auric goldfinger disagreeing with scott

1959 was the time for happenstance. i do agree with that. i can't remember the last time i heard someone say it in my lifetime though. but maybe i just don't run in the right circles. my circles veer to the left.

yes it's v old-timey now and mr goldfinger is sadly no longer with us but the other point is that he makes a *distinction* between happenstance and coincidence

i want to put that on a sign in my store window. *Open by chance or by happenstance*.

Restless Leg Syndrome is also known as the jimmylegs. Why would anyone call it anything else?

Henpecked.

― Defund Phil Collins (Tom D.)

kind of a weird one, that. when i was young there was this comic strip called andy capp, who i think was one of those "henpecked husbands". he'd go out to the pub every night and come home drunk and then his wife - flo? was her name flo? would beat the shit out of him. i wasn't really sure why that was supposed to be funny, because it wasn't funny when my mom beat my dad, but i figured maybe it was a british thing. i didn't get why they were always going on about the vicar in fred bassett, either. marmaduke - that was a comic i understood. he was so big! he was an extremely large dog!

anyway maybe there's been a larger cultural shift around how we understand abusive relationships that's led to that word falling out of common usage. i hope so, at least. :)

she was called flo, yes

andy capp's son (who had a separate strip in UK kids' comics) was called "buster capp", which is -- somewhat against the spirit of the thread -- an example of a phrase you think is much more modern than it is (in fact it goes back to the 1860s)

i should point out that i _didn't_ get heathcliff, which is part of the reason i was so gratified when that comic went more or less openly surrealist some years back. that comic never made any fucking sense anyway.

i've love to see some kind of chart where... google has these usage charts where you can see the popularity of a phrase rise and fall, but it's usually over the short term. i'm kind of interested in knowing statistically what words have experienced the most precipitous decline in usage compared to its usage in the previous 100 years. the rust belt of words, if you will.

Though, no ranking - you have to specify the words or phrases you want to track

I should probably have flipped case-insensitive on

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rust+belt%2Cflyover+states%2Cboondocks&year_start=1600&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true

Cool. I noticed massive spikes in the use of "henpecked" ca. 1850 and 1890. I wonder why?

Though, no ranking - you have to specify the words or phrases you want to track

― Alba

yeah _that_'s what i'm looking for, leveraging big data to locate emergent blah blah blah :)

just came across something i thought was a typo but no... teapoy

I don't hear "corpulent" much anymore

in some 19th century novel I saw a character's paunch described as his "corporation," that one seems due for a revival

in some 19th century novel I saw a character's paunch described as his "corporation," that one seems due for a revival

― Brad C.

"yo mama so fat that left-wing economists have identified her as one of the most significant causes for the sharp spike in her country's gini coefficient over the past 20 years"

Lol

There's a whole thread on here about using the formulation "out of", as in "him out of Simply Red".

I've lived in London for over a decade now and have never heard anyone use it.

"tuchus"

^ feels like this word had its day when older borscht circuit comedians like Milton Berle began to graduate into television.

I can't differentiate whether you hear this more if you hang out with more Jewish people, versus hanging out with Jewish people who are also older/a prior generation when Yiddish was more prevalent.

I like when "et cetera" used to be abbreviated "&c."

Me too!
But I never use it 'cos I'm never sure if other folks will recognize it or just think I mistyped...

Don't remember seeing &c, does look useful. Was it prevalent. In books or magazines or what?

Victorian novels

“&” originating as a ligature of “et” which makes it a literal equivalent

I recall an English teacher telling me to "show more spunk", as if this was a completely normal request. The class sniggered.

Admittedly, this was last century.

My coworker has chilblains and it made me think of this thread.

Everyone knows at least one thing about chilblains, right?

I didn't find out "tuchus" was Yiddish until recently. I'm pretty sure my Southern Baptist grandfather used that word.

I don't hear "corpulent" much anymore

in some 19th century novel I saw a character's paunch described as his "corporation," that one seems due for a revival

(my dad and all of his brothers have paunches, fwiw, and this is gentle joking amongst family— not meant to be shaming or anything)

To try to explain the Scottish word "gallus" the other day I used the word "cocksure", which I don't think I've heard in a while.

(it's not actually a very accurate equivalent anyway)

“gallant” used to mean you were a bit of a rascal with the ladies, is that closer to it?

Irish people use "bold" about people in a similar way to gallus I think. Obviously bold is used in England but more just as courageous and clear, not with the edge of cheekiness

It seems mad that the link isn't 'gall' (bold, impudent), but the etymologies appear different.

I think of Goofus and Gallant, the comic strip from Highlights magazine

"'gallant' used to mean you were a bit of a rascal with the ladies, is that closer to it?"

I was reading about obituaries a while back, and this reminds me of a chap called Hugh Massingberd, who used euphemisms so as not to speak too ill of the dead.

"Thus we have one dissolute old lord, widely acknowledged to be a borderline rapist, described, in homage to one of Massingberd's finest confections, as an 'uncompromisingly direct ladies' man'. ... 'He tended to become over-attached to certain ideas and theories' - fascist. 'Gave colourful accounts of his exploits' - liar. 'She did not suffer fools gladly' - foul-tempered shrew."

It also mentions Antony Moynihan, 3rd Baron Moynihan, who "provided, through his character and career, ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle. His chief occupations were bongo-drummer, confidence trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer".

i thought gallant was more towards courteous etc in dealing with the ladies of the court

Now it does

In fact “gallant” is one of the entries in this thread, proposed by me, many moons ago

The suggestion that it's from "gallows" as in "he's fit for the gallows, that one" is more entertaining.

I just think of suspenders (which makes sense as coming from gallows; they are literally for hanging).

Goofus and Gallows didn't test well

Gallant I think was borrowed from the French? Anyway, there was a mid-18th century substyle of Classical music in Germany they called “galant”, as it was smoother and more poised/less emotional than the high baroque which came before.

iirc, gallantry was a later manifestation of ye auld style chivalry

The suggestion that it's from "gallows" as in "he's fit for the gallows, that one" is more entertaining.

protestantism took a dim view of both chivalry and gallantry bcz they were both centered on the idea that women were to be greatly admired and female sexuality was incorporated into its ideals, rather than viewed as inherently foul and sinful

And Catholics don’t? What with Mary being a perpetual virgin and whatnot

Victorian Britain was both Protestant and enamored with Arthurian mythology.

Also simultaneously patriarchal and so dominated by a woman that I just referred to an entire time period using her name.

I don't have a point really (I usually don't, as a rule). I am musing idly.

protestantism took a dim view of both chivalry and gallantry bcz they were both centered on the idea that women were to be greatly admired and female sexuality was incorporated into its ideals, rather than viewed as inherently foul and sinful

It's really nothing to do with that though, it's about someone being cocky and with attitude and liable to end up in trouble as a result of it.

cybernetics