Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Inkstainedwretch]

My father used to say "hotter'n a two-bit pistol." That one dated from the '20s-'30s, when you could probably buy a cheap imported pistol for two bits from somebody who was desperate. In the early 20th century the American market was flooded with cheap pistols, mostly from Spain or Belgium. Their defects were hidden by nickel plating and were often tarted up with fake pearl grips, giving both nickel plating and pearl grips a bad name. The idea was, with their pot-metal frames, they would overheat after a few shots. That's how I heard it, anyway.

 

[ChrisB]

Yup, although it's been awhile since I've heard that phrase.

How abut a roscoe?

 

[Haversack]

I've always taken the phrase about something being, "hotter than a three dollar pistol" to mean that the object was seriously looked for by the police or that someone was on the run.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Price of tea in China

"Price of eggs in Istanbul"?

 

[Benzadmiral]

How abut a roscoe?

Roscoe, heater, gat . . .

Heeled: to be armed (different from "well-heeled," well equipped with money)

Scotched: to be robbed. (In a 1930s novella, Ellery Queen exclaims, when discovering that his revolver has been stolen, "By George, I've been scotched!")

 

[Benzadmiral]

Maybe so, but I do like the story of the word's origin, as told to me, by a catholic priest.
Centuries ago, when the law of the land went hand in glove with church law, adultery was a crime on the statute. Those guilty of this heinous peccadillo were said to be:
Found
Under
Carnal
Knowledge.
I didn't believe the story for one minute, but it's a great excuse to drop a sanitised F bomb.

. . .

My ex-wife tried to convince me that it was based on the notion (or legend) of legal prostitution on medieval battlefields, supposedly sanctioned by whoever was king at the time, thusly:
Fornication
Under
Consent (of the)
King

Aside from the fact that the idiomatic English for this would have been "by Consent of the King," it just sounds too pat. (Said ex also swore that the reason I interpreted colors of paint or clothes differently from her was that my eyes were brown and hers were blue. When I pointed out that light does not enter the colored iris of the eye but through the pupil, she changed the subject.)

 

[Merrill]

I would (and still do occasionally) hear "ice box" used by various relatives, as well as the generic "frigidaire". And speaking of my grandmother, she was a very vivacious, larger-than-life character full of home-spun wit and wisdom. She often used "colorful" language expressions that probably should not be printed here, while explaining why so-in-so was a ne'er-do-well and why picking strawberries "built character". The latter rubbed off on my dad, as his response to anytime we were cold, hot, wet, dry, tired, sore and just plain miserable was "it builds character".

When I was growing up (I'm pushing eighty now) the two men in my life, my dad and my mother's dad, made a point of never using bad language around me, and it wasn't because they didn't know it. They wanted me to mature in a different context. And it worked. Maybe it's one of the reasons I ended up making my bread (old expression) as a high school English teacher...

 

[skydog757]

Three on a match is bad luck.

 

[tonyb]

I've always taken the phrase about something being, "hotter than a three dollar pistol" to mean that the object was seriously looked for by the police or that someone was on the run.

Seems plausible. Certain things (and people) become just "too hot to handle." You know, get too close to them and you get burned.

To "draw heat" means, among those of my acquaintance, to behave in ways that attract the attention of law enforcement personnel.

 

[Haversack]

skydog757 wrote: "Three on a match is bad luck."

That goes back to the First World War. The amount of time it takes for three people to light their cigarettes from one match is the time necessary for a sniper to notice, aim, and shoot. And the flare of a match being lit under the right circumstances can be seen up ten miles away… So sometimes its not just a sniper with a rifle, its an artillery battery.

 

[Merrill]

Three on a match is bad luck.

This one, I understand, dates from WWI. An enemy sniper was said to have time to aim and shoot if three soldiers on the other side lit three cigarettes in the dark with one match.

 

[BlueTrain]

That reminds me of some military axioms that seem to have eternal truths:

All enemy soldiers are snipers; the enemy has better weapons; we used to have better weapons; the enemy is out of range; but we're within range of the enemy; your rifle has something wrong with it and it won't shoot straight; we're going to be home by Christmas; and so on and so forth.

 

[BlueTrain]

On another topic, however, my grandmother was born in the 1870s and died in 1970 or 1971. She had a couple expressions I've never heard anyone else use.

If I were going outside not wearing what she thought was adequate clothing and it was cold, she would say I was "fanning." But if it were hot, she would say she was "smothering." Although I never heard anyone say it in person, I did hear on an old radio show (there being no new ones) when someone went inside a room that was stuffy, I guess, they said it was "close." I think the essential meaning was that it was all closed up and hence stuffy or "close."

 

[HudsonHawk]

On another topic, however, my grandmother was born in the 1870s and died in 1970 or 1971. She had a couple expressions I've never heard anyone else use.

If I were going outside not wearing what she thought was adequate clothing and it was cold, she would say I was "fanning." But if it were hot, she would say she was "smothering." Although I never heard anyone say it in person, I did hear on an old radio show (there being no new ones) when someone went inside a room that was stuffy, I guess, they said it was "close." I think the essential meaning was that it was all closed up and hence stuffy or "close."

"In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball...Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms...the game of ball is glorious." - Walt Whitman, 1846

 

[vitanola]

Roscoe

"Roscoe"? That's a color gel for stage lighting. That, or a lubricator for a steam engine...

 

[niv]

Yup, although it's been awhile since I've heard that phrase.

"Hotter than a three dollar pistol on a Saturday night. "

 

[niv]

"Do a Barney Oldfield, Long Tom!" Carter "Doc" Savage

 

[tonyb]

"Roscoe"? That's a color gel for stage lighting. That, or a lubricator for a steam engine...

But was he here?

 

[Benzadmiral]

On another topic, however, my grandmother was born in the 1870s and died in 1970 or 1971. She had a couple expressions I've never heard anyone else use.

If I were going outside not wearing what she thought was adequate clothing and it was cold, she would say I was "fanning." But if it were hot, she would say she was "smothering." Although I never heard anyone say it in person, I did hear on an old radio show (there being no new ones) when someone went inside a room that was stuffy, I guess, they said it was "close." I think the essential meaning was that it was all closed up and hence stuffy or "close."

"Smothering" I used to hear as a boy. I still use "close" to describe a stuffy room: "It's close in there."

My mother used one term that I've never been able to track down. She said her father referred to a Phillips screwdriver as a "French" screwdriver. She was Canadian, western prairies area, but no Canadian I've ever met knows that term. Her father was Swedish, born there in the late 19th Century. So maybe that was the origin.

 

[2jakes]

"Kriegie" - Military term.
used by Allied pow's in World War II German internment camp.

Sketches by George Procak, US pilot & pow in German camp during WW2.