Author Topic: You're HOW OLD?  (Read 3883 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline iddee

  • Administrator
  • Gold Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 6122
  • Thanked: 405 times
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Sophia, N. C.
You're HOW OLD?
« on: October 02, 2015, 09:31:22 pm »
*WORDS AND PHRASES REMIND US OF THE WAY WE WORD*   by Richard Lederer

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included
"Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry."
A bevy of readers have asked me to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:

Back in the olden days we had a lot of "moxie". We'd "put on our best bib and tucker" and "straighten up and fly right".
"Hubba-hubba!" We'd "cut a rug" in some "juke joint" and then go "necking" and "smooching" and "spooning" and
"billing and cooing" and "pitching woo" in "hot rods and jalopies" in some "passion pit" or "lovers lane".
"Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!" We were "in like Flynn" and "living the life of
Riley", and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a "knucklehead", a "nincompoop" or a "pill". "Not for all the tea in China!"

"Back in the olden days", "life used to be swell", but when's the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of "beehives, pageboys and the D.A."; of "spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers". "Oh, my aching back."  "Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore."  Like Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and Kurt Vonnegut's "Billy Pilgrim", we have become unstuck in time.
We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, "I'll be a monkey's uncle!" or "This is a fine kettle of fish!" we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We blink, and they're gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape of our perception, like "Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy
cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinders monkey."

Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone? Long time ago:
Pshaw. The milkman did it. Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread box. Banned in Boston. The very idea! It's your nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain. Domino theory. Fail safe. Civil defense. Fiddlesticks! You look like the wreck of the Hesperus.
Cooties. Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! And awa-a-ay we go! Oh, my stars and garters!

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions "than Carter had liver pills". This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart's deep core. But just as "one never steps into the same river twice", "one cannot step into the same language twice". Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It's one of the greatest advantages of aging. We "can have archaic and eat it, too".
See ya later, alligator!
“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

Offline neillsayers

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2173
  • Thanked: 197 times
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Arkansas Ozarks, U.S.A.
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2015, 09:35:30 pm »
 :D Now you're cooking with gas
Neill Sayers
Herbhome Bees
USDA Zone 7a

Offline kebee

  • WorldWide Beekeeper Emeritus
  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1095
  • Thanked: 55 times
  • Gender: Male
  • May GOD be with us
  • Location: eastcentral Al
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2015, 05:30:09 am »
Had not notice that much but thinking about it the saying have seem to have disappear and I remember them all.

Ken

Offline Ray

  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 200
  • Thanked: 10 times
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: A 1 hour drive North of Grand Rapids Michigan
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2015, 08:14:44 pm »
Dumber than a box of rocks, deader than a door nail, older than dirt, poorer than a church mouse, heavier than a dead preacher and hotter than the hubs of he....rhymes with well.
Came Home late from the old watering hole and all I got for supper was, Hot Tongue and Cold Shoulder.
See ya later alligator... when your legs are straighter crocodile. 

Offline brooksbeefarm

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2566
  • Thanked: 89 times
  • Location: fair grove, mo.
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2015, 10:11:36 pm »
Some i remember and didn't like.(1) When i get ahold of you young man, i'm going to turn you wrong side out?(2) There's going to be a butt kicking, and guess who's going to furnish the Butt.(3) Your going to get it now when i get you, i'll knock you into tomorrow? Didn't know what that ment, but knew it couldn't be good, i did wonder what that would look like. I still hate the taste of Dial and Lava soap.:laugh: :laugh: Jack
PS, all of the above would be child abuse now days. :o

Offline iddee

  • Administrator
  • Gold Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 6122
  • Thanked: 405 times
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Sophia, N. C.
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2015, 10:30:40 pm »
I never figured what constituted a time span of "two jerks of a sheep's tail".
“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

Offline riverbee

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 8924
  • Thanked: 410 times
  • Gender: Female
  • ***Forum Sponsor***
  • Location: El Paso Twp, Wisconsin
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2015, 12:32:03 am »
"I never figured what constituted a time span of "two jerks of a sheep's tail".

LOL.........(short period of time) ie.....just how fast you'd get a whooping or how fast you'd get a whooping the next time........a very short period of time......... :D :D :D
i keep wild things in a box..........™
if you obey the rules, you miss all the fun.....katherine hepburn
Forum Sponsor

Offline LazyBkpr

  • Gold Member
  • Posts: 6842
  • Thanked: 205 times
  • Gender: Male
  • www.outyard.net
    • The Outyard
  • Location: Richland Iowa
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #7 on: October 22, 2015, 10:23:15 am »
Fiddle Sticks!, For the love of Pete, Groovy, cockamamy, heebie jeebies, and... Theres more than one way to skin a cat...
   I have been asked more than once, why ANYONE would want to skin a cat after stating that phrase... to me, it always meant Catfish rather than a kitty cat....  Though, kitty cat fur might be soft and warm as a coat! :laugh:
   
   Dumbledore...
   Rather than knowing the word as our fav father figure from the Harry Potter series I thought it was a bumblebee...
Drinking RUM before noon makes you a PIRATE not an alcoholic!

*Sponsor*

Offline Ray

  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 200
  • Thanked: 10 times
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: A 1 hour drive North of Grand Rapids Michigan
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #8 on: October 22, 2015, 08:54:36 pm »

That man is as worthless as teats on a boar hog.
A skunk smells his own hole first
That pig won't suck
He will step over a dollar to pick up a penny
She'll make him hunt the cat hole
(a cat hole was a small opening to allow the barn cats access to assorted sheds, a cat in danger would be frantic in its search for a way out.)
The're headed for the barn
(Horses would go a little faster when they thought they where going home)


Offline Retroguy

  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 150
  • Thanked: 9 times
  • Gender: Male
  • Retroguy
  • Location: Ham Lake, Minnesota 55304
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #9 on: October 22, 2015, 09:28:41 pm »
"Colder than Kelsey's Ice Box," was a term my folks used a lot.  Always wondered who Kelsey was and what made their ice box colder than the next person's.

"So tight with a nickel that he makes the buffalo defecate," (except no one uses that "college word" at the end).

When some young kid asked a now departed friend how old he was he'd tell them, "I'm old enough that I don't by green bananas anymore."

When some youngster asks me how old I am I tell them, "I remember when the store was called New Navy."

I always stand behind my work...
It makes me harder to find.

Offline brooksbeefarm

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2566
  • Thanked: 89 times
  • Location: fair grove, mo.
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #10 on: October 22, 2015, 10:04:05 pm »
Not to change the subject, but does anyone hear remember BUSHWACKING  8) We done alot of it until one guy took shots at us on the run  :o Our favorite thing was waiting till the car started rocking or the windows steamed up, then slip up open the door or if a window was open throw a chicken in with them. Talk about screaming and hollering. :laugh: :laugh: I'm not as old as many of you, i don't remember hardly any of those sayings. ??? Jack

Offline Slowmodem

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1551
  • Thanked: 37 times
  • Gender: Male
    • http://gregsbees.blogspot.com/
  • Location: Ten Mile, TN
Re: You're HOW OLD?
« Reply #11 on: October 24, 2015, 10:47:31 am »
   I have been asked more than once, why ANYONE would want to skin a cat after stating that phrase...

Perhaps they were making guitar strings.   8)
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN
Beekeeping at 26.4 kbs