Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Fading Fast]

"Making time," as in "he was just making time with her" to describe a man chatting with a woman to get her interested in going out with him. Usually used with a slightly negative connotation implying the man is either a bit slick (or thinks he is) or regularly tries to promote himself to women.

 

[BobHufford]

A woman in her mid-80s (who was buying a carton of mixed cigarettes and inquiring about the price of condoms) told my 28-year-old daughter that she liked her "getup".

 

[MisterCairo]

Scuttlebut.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I've lost touch with GI slang. Do they even still call themselves GIs? We still did in the 60s. Do they still eat chow (dates from the Boxer Rebellion)? Is the First Sergeant still the Topkick or First Shirt? Is the CO still the Old Man? I won't even say what we called the old fore-and-aft garrison cap, since this is a family-friendly site. Do they still wear those things?

 

[Stearmen]

I've lost touch with GI slang. Do they even still call themselves GIs? We still did in the 60s. Do they still eat chow (dates from the Boxer Rebellion)? Is the First Sergeant still the Topkick or First Shirt? Is the CO still the Old Man? I won't even say what we called the old fore-and-aft garrison cap, since this is a family-friendly site. Do they still wear those things?

I think the Army is phasing it out, in favor of the beret. All the other branches still wear the C Cap. Trivia, the Army Air Corp called it, a Flight Cap!

 

[BlueTrain]

Ah! Army slang. I'll bet they still call it chow but strange new words have entered the vocabulary, like: dormitory. The mess hall, never a particularly good name (no matter what you think of army food), is now the DFAC but that's just the army. The Navy and Marines have other terms. I imagine that creamed chipped beef on toast is still around.

My son, who got out of the army nearly ten years ago, informed me that an M-16 rifle, because it is longer than an M-4 carbine, is sometimes called a musket.

Other armies have their own slang and sometimes it enters into the vocabulary with a slightly different meaning or changes over time. In Burma, people live in "bashas," which I do not think is even a Burmese word (Indian). In British service, a basha is now a little shelter made with a poncho or other suitable material. There are other words for coffee and tea but the only one that comes to mind and which is not military or British, is java. But I've never actually heard anyone use the term. Sometimes slang is a little forced.

 

[skydog757]

"Does Macy's tell Gimbel's?"

 

[greatestescaper]

Consumption, as in tuberculosis. The following exchange was overheard between a visitor and his son at the post hospital at the Fort Davis National Historic Site (a western fort protecting a portion of the road to Sacramento from 1854 to about 1890):

Father- "I didn't know the Apaches were cannibals."
Son- "What?"
Father- "Yeah. It says right here on this sign that this soldier died of consumption."

Clearly the man needs to watch or read more westerns.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Does Macy's tell Gimbel's?"

Good one. Was reasonably common up through the '80s - haven't heard it in, at least, a decade.

 

[kaiser]

Good one. Was reasonably common up through the '80s - haven't heard it in, at least, a decade.

Need some help on the macy's one. Never heard it before.

 

[Fading Fast]

Need some help on the macy's one. Never heard it before.

Macy's and Gimbels were competing NYC department stores back in the first half of the 20th Century (and up to the '80s) that were just a couple of blocks away from each other. They were highly competitive always trying to beat the other for product or price as they had a similar customer demographic.

The expression "Does Macy's Tell Gimbels" is a shorthand for saying that competitors don't share information. So, if you were working for a paper company and ran into a salesman from another firm and he asked if your firm was going to open a store somewhere or cut your price or add a product, you could answer him by saying "does Macy's tell Gimbals" meaning, I won't give that information to a competitor.

It was a very, very commonly used expression, as noted, up until about the '80s when, not coincidently, Gimbels closed and the expression has been fading from use since.

 

[greatestescaper]

One of my dearest friends comes from rural stock of Long Island, NY. More specifically his grandparents were first generation born in the States, retained quite a bit of the old country, and so his father was reared in a rather rural household. As such my friends father has preserved a dated culture by another 40 to 50 years.

A few weeks ago my friends parents were in town visiting from Plano, Tx, and his father had to explain to us youngsters (mind you, yes he's old enough to be my father, but this language is dated even for him) that when he said druggist he was referring to the pharmacist.

Similarly my cousin married a wonderful man from China, who spent a lot of time growing up in the Netherlands. When his family relocated to the United States he spent a great deal of time watching westerns. As such his early English sounded a lot like dialogue from a John Wayne picture. He has since modernized his language, but we all still tease him about it. Though honestly, I think it helped him break the ice with the part of my family that are from more rural and western stock.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

How about "torch singer"? Diana Krall would fit the bill, but this isn't a term I have heard in recent decades.

 

[Fading Fast]

One of my dearest friends comes from rural stock of Long Island, NY. More specifically his grandparents were first generation born in the States, retained quite a bit of the old country, and so his father was reared in a rather rural household. As such my friends father has preserved a dated culture by another 40 to 50 years.

A few weeks ago my friends parents were in town visiting from Plano, Tx, and his father had to explain to us youngsters (mind you, yes he's old enough to be my father, but this language is dated even for him) that when he said druggist he was referring to the pharmacist.

Similarly my cousin married a wonderful man from China, who spent a lot of time growing up in the Netherlands. When his family relocated to the United States he spent a great deal of time watching westerns. As such his early English sounded a lot like dialogue from a John Wayne picture. He has since modernized his language, but we all still tease him about it. Though honestly, I think it helped him break the ice with the part of my family that are from more rural and western stock.

My father and his mother were my window into the GE and druggist and drug store where what those things were - pharmacy was not a term they used. What's funny is that druggist, as you noted, has faded, but drug store is still pretty common. I've mentioned these all before in this thread, but those two went to their graves calling

• The refrigerator, the icebox
• The movies, the moving pictures
• A food cart, the lunch wagon
• A swimsuit for men, swimming trunks
• A calculator, an adding machine
• The comics, the funny papers or funny pages
• Turning on any heating system was turning up the steam

And I could go on. Growing up, I started to realize - as I progressed through grammar school - that my father and grandmother used a lot of words that were not used by others anymore. And as I tried to "fit in," I started speaking one way at home and another way at school - not quite two languages, but definitely a lot of different words and expressions for each of those worlds.

 

[BlueTrain]

Interesting not so much that you do that but rather that you realize you do it. I think it's a very common thing. You do not naturally speak the same way everywhere or to everyone. You modify both your speech and your vocabulary to suit the audience and the circumstances and they all change over time.

There are words and expressions that have changed with the technology. We used to have typing in school and before that, typewriting. Now they teach keyboarding. We used to say icebox at home but then, we actually had an icebox. Then we got a Kelvinator and that the word that was used as often as refrigerator.

Boxer shorts for men were sometimes called "trunks" and I still say swimming trunks, even though I don't have any. I don't remember if anyone said "moving picture show" instead of the movies but nobody said "film." A funny thing about English, probably true in other languages, is how "pants" is plural, I guess, although sometimes you see the word "pant" in advertising. It sounds a little forced, though. Same with trunks, as in swimming trunks, or trousers, as in a pair of. You might say breeches (or britches) but nobody would say breech or britch. They wouldn't, would they?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Moom pitcha" is the proper pronunciation for a moving-picture show.

"Underpants" is the term for the garment worn under one's regular clothing, whether by men or women. The cut of the garment is irrelevant to the name.

"Britches" are regular pants, usually only used jocularly, in such phrases as "Pull up ya britches!"

Whoever it was who started saying "pant" instead of "pants" should be placed up against the wall and shot.

"Bathing suit" is the garment you wear in the water, whether male or female.

"The funnies" is the comic section of the newspaper.

"The rotogravure" is the full-color slickish-paper weekend newspaper supplement -- "Family Weekly," "Parade," or whatever other one your paper carries.

"Victrola" is the mechanism upon which you play records, regardless of its age or make.

"Piazza" is the front porch of any house. After supper you "set on the piazza" -- not "sit," "set" -- and listen to The Ball Game.

"Supper" is the meal you eat in the evening. "Dinner" is the meal you eat at noon.

The air raid siren that blows at 11:30 every morning on the roof of the town office is "the Dinner Whistle."

"Sub-primary" is school for five year olds, and comes before the first grade.

 

[BlueTrain]

Oh, come on! Dinner is the main meal of the day, whenever it is you eat it. Supper is at midnight.

We had a front porch but it wasn't a piazza. We had a back porch, too, and neither was it. The icebox used to sit on the back porch. I would also sit on the steps to the back porch in the summertime and read the Sunday funnies. The first one in the funny papers was Dick Tracy. Whatever happened to Dick Tracy? Someone that had a Florida room might have a piazza but we didn't have one. We had a neighbor who was Italian and might have had one but I don't think she did. The only foreigners I ever knew in the 1950s were either Italian, Syrian (used to think they were Lebanese) or Puerto Rican. And that was in West Virginia. I did know someone who had a Florida room and a side porch but I never heard it referred to, so I don't know what it might have properly been called.

My grandmother called underpants "step-ins." She never owned a bra, or as they were once quaintly referred to, a brassiere. I like the German word: Büstenhalter. It just seems so descriptive. The British call a bathing suit a bathing costume, which sounds funny.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Piazza" was popular in East Coast neighborhoods with an Italian population, especially in Northern New England, where it was common in Boston English and dialects influenced by it well into the 20th Century.

I never heard the midday meal referred to as "lunch" until I was in grade school, and I didn't know what they were talking about it. It was always "breakfast, dinnah, suppah" in our neighborhood. Suppah was eaten between 430 and 530pm. Nobody ever ate anything late at night except maybe a dish -- not a "bowl,"ever, always a *dish* -- of cereal.

We always called the back porch "the back stoop" or the "back doorsteps" even if it was structurally a porch.

The backyard was simply "the yard." The front yard was "the dooryard (pronounced doi-yahd)

Dick Tracy is still around, and is actually enjoying something of a renaissance. The current storyline deals with a blowhard politician named "Bellowthon" running on an "anti-alien" platform, who has a henchman named "Selfy," whose schtick is that he's always taking selfies.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I like the German word: Büstenhalter. It just seems so descriptive.

Yeah, but Germans are so really thrifty, so: "BH".

 

[HudsonHawk]

Wow...so many...

I still only hear reference to the "drug store". No one calls it the "pharmacy".

We never referred to your "underpants". They were your "drawers", or sometimes if you were REALLY old school, they were "step ins"

We did "set", but on the porch or veranda, not the piazza. I don't know what a "stoop" is (well, I mean I know what it is, but you never heard that term except in movies about Yankees).

"Dinner" is an afternoon meal, typically around 2:00. "Supper" is an evening meal around 6:00 or 7:00. You don't eat dinner and supper on the same day.