Shangas
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 6,116
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
I still use "Kid in a Candy store". Although around our town I only know of maybe 2-3 candy stores which would fit the bill.
I'm not even sure about seven or eight because kids are now getting into video games at a much younger age. Before it was mainly older kids and teens.
My father liked to get out of the house and drive around town, checking out how the fishing or hunting in the area was going. While out, he would often pick up a foot-long coney dog at Dairy Queen for my mother (Freda), who really enjoyed them as an occassioinal treat (always with extra onions). At one particular family gathering someone remarked how much my mother must like coney dogs, to which my father (unthinkingly) replied "Oh yeah, Fritzy goes after those things like a hound." Much hilarity followed, but my father never used that phrase in the presence of my mother again.
When I was a boy, and making undue fuss over a perceived injustice, my mother or father would remonstrate with, "Don't make a Federal case out of it!"
I'm currently reading "The Saint in New York," published in 1934, and a firearm (handgun) was referred to as a "Betsy." A quick Internet search via Etymology Dictionary shows that this was a slang term for a gun and the origin goes back to 1785: British Army slang - "Brown Bess" - for the old flintlock musket.
This is just another reason why I love reading old books - it puts you in the time in a way that even the best historical fiction writer can't fully capture as there will always be some modern bent / influence to historical fiction. The Saint series isn't challenging, but every few years I enjoy reading one as time travel escapism.
Strutting like a rooster.
"Jake," meaning "OK, swell, great, copacetic." It could be used sincerely, as in "Everything's jake with me!" or it could be used caustically, as in "Oh, yeahhhh, well ain't this just jake!"
Just one of many fine slang words pre-empted by the hideous newspeak that is "awwwwwwesome."
I always heard "jake" as a form of "jake legged" as in "paralyzed in a drunken stupor". Look at those jakes holding up the lamp post...
Or the millennial equivalent: "allsome".
I always heard "jake" as a form of "jake legged" as in "paralyzed in a drunken stupor". Look at those jakes holding up the lamp post...