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Terms Which Have Disappeared

bond_323

New in Town
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29
Location
United States
My dad was the king of old phrases that he seemingly pulled out of thin air. I did some searching after he passed and found that some of his phrase-ology goes back years and years. Some of my favorites-

"Tighter than Dick's hatband."
"Boy, lose the attitude or I'm gonna jerk a knot in your tail."
"It's raining harder than a cow pi$$ing on a flat rock!"
 
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10,931
Location
My mother's basement
"Hotter'n a two-dollar pistol," meaning something so obviously stolen it may as well carry documentation to that effect, which is quite distinct from "hotter'n a three-dollar (um, 'professional' woman)."
 
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Messages
17,195
Location
New York City
We called underpants "underpants." Not "panties." Not "briefs." Underpants.

Long winter underwear was called "drawers," prounced "draws." Hence the old joke, "Summer is over, winter draws on."

You jarred my memory on that one - when, in the winter, I would stay with my grandmother as a little kid, she would tell me to get dressed, put on your "draws" referring to long underwear. I haven't thought about that term in, maybe, forty years, but now I can hear her saying it in my head like it was yesterday.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
"Slacks" is another word that's been turned into a generic term where it was once specifically descriptive. Slacks were originally loose, casual pants worn mostly by Bing Crosby, golfers, and women -- the idea of all non-denim pants being called "slacks" is a recent innovation. "A dressy pair of slacks" was an oxymoron -- slacks, by definition, were the opposite of "dress pants."
 

TimeWarpWife

One of the Regulars
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279
Location
In My House
..."Boy, lose the attitude or I'm gonna jerk a knot in your tail."....

In a similar vein, "I'm gonna knock a knot on your head Ajax won't take off." Showing my age here, to this day I still say things are "neat" (for the younger folks, that's the equivalent of "cool").

"Sit on it" from Happy Days and "up your nose with a rubber hose" from Welcome Back Kotter were also quite popular in the 70s when I was in middle and high school.

And where I grew up in the south, people didn't have temper tantrums or conniptions, they had hissy fits. Which also reminds me of, "if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about." How many times did I hear that as a kid. :p
 
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LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,722
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
In a similar vein, "I'm gonna knock a knot on your head Ajax won't take off." And showing my age, to this day I still say things are "neat" (for the younger folks, that's the equivalent of "cool").

A friend in the '70s went away to boarding school and came back calling things he approved of "shag." If something was highly approved, it was "mega shag." If it was the ultima thule of approval, it was "mega shag to the max much."

He was given the cold shoulder for such pronouncments, and soon moved away in shame, never to be heard from again.
 

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