We walk the walk but do we talk the talk?

[BeBopBaby]

I have a weak spot for using the words hoi polloi, rapscallion, and roustabout. lol

 

[Dr Doran]

My dad, born in 1924, said pillowslip.
I have a chart that shows the difference between Davenports, Chesterfields, divans, sofas, couches and maybe something else.

Regional chart? Sounds like you're a linguist.

 

[RedHotRidinHood]

Oh! Oh! And I say "hoodlum" all the time too. My kids just kinda say, "wha?" I love that word-I wonder what the origin of that one is.

 

[Dr Doran]

Oh! Oh! And I say "hoodlum" all the time too. My kids just kinda say, "wha?" I love that word-I wonder what the origin of that one is.

How 'bout "ne'er-do-well"? Is it 'period correct'?

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Buncha jerks

Hooligan, thug, no-goodnik. All-around-bad guy. Bad news man.
Dodo. Doofus. Dumkopf. Nimrod.

 

[Benny Holiday]

When confronted by some crazy driver on the road (almost every day) I invariably end up screaming out the window, "Ya bum!", "Palooka!" "Deadbeat!" or "Get off the road ya clown!" Most of them are provisional drivers, teenagers who've just gotten their licences, who have a very bad reputation on our roads for dangerous driving and zooming in and out of traffic like they think it's some sort of video game.

My parents brought me up with a huge range of good old Aussie phrases, like "Fair dinkum?" (= really?), "make a blue" (= make a mistake), "mongrel" (= shifty or nasty character), "crook" (= not feeling well), dunny (=toilet, especially an outhouse), "the wallopers" (= the police), "bloody oath" (= absolutely!), "yakka" (= work) and "flat out like a lizard drinkin' " (= very busy). There are "heaps" (= lots) more, but it's hard to think of them consciously because they're everyday Aussie phrases that you don't think about, they're just a natural part of everyday speech.

My Dad had a great variety of phrases both 1930s-40s Aussie and Golden Era. One that I often quote is, "You can't educate a mug, mate," meaning you're wasting your breath trying to explain something to a stupid or disinterested person.

 

[dhermann1]

I've been saying "moidah" a lot lately (as in "murder"). I think it may be from seeing Betty Hutton sing "Moidah, He Says". Whatever.

 

[Polka Dot]

It's difficult to analyze one's own speech patterns. I can't really tell if I say things differently than others, but I can think of a few expressions I've used that are obviously old-fashioned, or just old.

* "A dime a dozen" - Even penny candy isn't that cheap anymore.
* "Starving Armenians" - A reference to the Armenian genocide in the 1920s. My mother used to say this if my brother and I weren't eating enough or if we were eating like we hadn't eaten in days.
* "Put through the wringer" - Most people don't use wringers for laundry anymore.
* "Get your goat" - World Wide Words says this one is from the early 1900s.

None of these is particularly rare, but it's interesting to see how long cultural references can remain in use.

I used the phrase "powder room" in a conversation with a friend the other day, not because of the forum here, but because that's what I've always called a bathroom without a bathtub. My friend laughed at me and told me I read too many old books. [huh]

 

[Adelaidey]

Haha, when I was really little, I thought that my Maga called her couch "the Davenport" because she had actually named her couch... I learned the difference when I asked her what the armchair was named... lol

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Oh! Oh! And I say "hoodlum" all the time too. My kids just kinda say, "wha?" I love that word-I wonder what the origin of that one is.

A reporter wanted to shield the identity of one Muldoon. He switched the name around to Noodlum and of course the typesetter made a typographical error so now we have Hoodlum. I don't remember the article saying how it caught on and I also don't remember how I know most of this trivia. Probably I read it in a book like Hog on Ice about phrase origins.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother used to yell at my brother all the time for "wastin' his life hangin' around on the corner with cheap hoods!" I always kind of secretly hoped he'd move on from there to the company of goons and gunsels, but no such luck.

 

[Story]

Just out of curiosity (and because I'm crazy for linguistics and, of course, the Golden Age), do you also use the language of the era?

Whoz askin', sister?

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/hardboiled-slang.htm

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Gunsel to me will always mean an older homosexual man's boy 'friend', like a runaway, rather than another word for gunman.

 

[Matt Crunk]

I read somewhere that the term "gunsel" first appeared in film in The Maltese Falcon, and it slipped by the censors because they weren't familiar with the term and, due to the context in which it was used, assumed it was slang for a "hired gun". Furthermore it later began to pop up in other noir and crime films used the same way because screenwriters didn't know the true meaning of the word and were just copying what they thought was slick street slang for a street tough with a gun.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I get funny looks and comments when I use words like 'vexed' or 'mountebank' but only from the older, smarter people. They know what I mean but are surprised to hear such words.

With the younger ones it rolls off them like duck water because they don't know what I am talking about to begin with.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I read somewhere that the term "gunsel" first appeared in film in The Maltese Falcon, and it slipped by the censors because they weren't familiar with the term and, due to the context in which it was used, assumed it was slang for a "hired gun". Furthermore it later began to pop up in other noir and crime films used the same way because screenwriters didn't know the true meaning of the word and were just copying what they thought was slick street slang for a street tough with a gun.

The censors had a problem with the line "how long have you been off the gooseberry lay" not knowing that the gooseberry lay meant stealing clothes off clothes lines, kids stuff in the world of crime.

 

[Talbot]

Gunsel???

1914, Amer. Eng., from hobo slang, "a catamite;" specifically "a young male kept as a sexual companion, esp. by an older tramp," from Yiddish genzel, from Ger. Gänslein "gosling, young goose." The secondary, non-sexual meaning "young hoodlum" seems to be entirely traceable to Dashiell Hammett, who snuck it into "The Maltese Falcon" (1939) while warring with his editor over the book's racy language.

" 'Another thing,' Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: 'Keep that gunsel away from me while you're making up your mind. I'll kill him.' "

The context implies some connection with gun and a sense of "gunman," and evidently the editor bought it. The word was retained in the script of the 1941 movie made from the book, so evidently the Motion Picture Production Code censors didn't know it either.
"The relationship between Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) and his young hit-man companion, Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook, Jr.), is made fairly clear in the movie, but the overt mention of sexual perversion would have been deleted if the censors hadn't made the same mistaken assumption as Hammett's editor." [Hugh Rawson, "Wicked Words," 1989, p.184]

 

[GHT]

If anyone has ever listened to Glenn Miller's "Doin' The Jive," it sounds like a foreign language. The lyrics that I found are these:

You clap your hands
And you swing out wide
Do the Suzy Q
Mix in a step or two
Put 'em all together
And you're doin the jive

Oh you stomp your feet
You swing out wide
Mess around awhile
Shake it boogie woogie style
Everybody's swinging when you doin the jive

If you can't play Rummy, Bridge, or Dummy?
Don't let it bother you
Cause you'll be the King
When the band begins to swing
You'll be a smarty and the life of the party
If you do a bump
And you swing out wide
Drop a little bit
Beat it out
Make it fit
Everybody's happy when they're doin the jive

It may be somethin' but it's not the jive
It may be somethin' but it's not the jive
Well what is the jive?
(more spoken)

You clap your hands
And you swing out wide
Do the Suzy Q
Mix in a step or two
Put it all all together
And you're doin the jive

Oh you stomp your feet
And you swing out wide
Mess around awhile
Shake it boogie woogie style
Everybody's swinging when they're doin the jive

If you can't play Rummy, Bridge, or Dummy?
Don't let it bother you
Cause you'll be the King
When the band begins to swing
You'll be a smarty and the life of the party
If you do a bump
And you swing out wide
Drop a little bit
Beat it out and
Make it fit
Everybody's happy when they're doin the jive

You see that piece where it says: "More spoken?" Well do tell me, what is spoken? And as Gibbs says, in NCIS: "In English McGee."

[video=youtube;smoNfOSoHq4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smoNfOSoHq4[/video]

Oh, and by the way, enjoy the music. I just love it.

 

[Shangas]

Whoz askin', sister?

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/hardboiled-slang.htm

I've been listening to old Dragnet radio shows for years. I never understood what 'Bunco' was, until now!

 

[LizzieMaine]

If anyone has ever listened to Glenn Miller's "Doin' The Jive," it sounds like a foreign language. The lyrics that I found are these:


You see that piece where it says: "More spoken?" Well do tell me, what is spoken? And as Gibbs says, in NCIS: "In English McGee."

Oh, and by the way, enjoy the music. I just love it.

Those are all descriptions of various popular dance steps in the late thirties. The "Suzy Q," a kind of a fancy swiveling deal, was hot stuff with college kids around 1936. Mr. Miller reveals himself to be something of a mouldy figge to still be talking about it in 1938.