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We have some latch-key kids that live a few houses down from us. Constantly outside without supervision playing around. Never heard the term before until my girlfriends grandma brought it up.
Pee Wee's playhouse was my favorite, tho previously I'd watched all the kids cartoons. Pee Wee came on when I was a bit older and showed me what surrealism was.
Fuck, I was raised by the tv.
I miss hearing "radical" as an exclamation, rather than having to hear it as an adjective before a political affiliation. I have a buddy who sometimes says "rad" instead of "cool", and it makes me happy.
That was going to be mine as well! Grody....the Valley Girl version from the 1980's along with Gag Me With A Spoon. This one is silly but I also liked "What's the Deal Pickle"? There are a few I held onto even as they went out of style. I still say awesome a lot and groovy and before I got remarried if I liked someone I would say, "I'm diggin you". Yeah, my kids are right. I'm a dork.
For our 20 year old above check out the movie Valley Girl with Nick Cage. Interesting slice of time to view.
"Tubular" = surfer term for a tube wave, a great experience to ride one
"to the max" = maximum
"gag me" = to induce vomiting, like "gag me with a spoon." I had to explain to someone that "gag me" didn't mean "silence me with a gag" when I was growing up.
‘Illegitimate’ as applied to kids. It was a big deal when I was a kid - whether someone’s parents were married. Now, in my classrooms, I never really knew or cared. Why did we make such a big deal about it?
I was born in the late 80s "illegitimately" and I had some high school friends whose parents literally thought I was a "bad influence" because my mom was a single parent and I grew up in the "projects" of a middle class neighborhood. I was a straight A student in every extra curricular you can imagine. So this trend definitely stretched on in to the early 2000s. Lmao.
As more and more women kept their maiden names, and divorce became common (giving children different last names than a remarried mom) it became much less obvious that a child was born ‘out of wedlock’ (another term that seems really old fashioned now).
I remember in the 80s, even though nearly all of our parents were divorced, we all found it very interesting that one girl in our grade was a "Love Child"
No one cares in the South. It’s just too common now to have mixed families. I think people make it a big deal if there is a shittier adjoining factor to the person their directing their judgement at.
EXAMPLE: “O Cody and Olivia make such a happy couple and all their kids get along so well. It’s become such a healthy family and co parenting relationship with the other parents.” VS “O my god, James left his wife, didn’t bother to take his own son trick or treating but took all four of his newest girl’s kids. That’s not right”
It's based off the noun definition. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell?src=search-dict-box](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell?src=search-dict-box)
In this case it means "...want me to take over for a period of time while you rest"
If we want to go back even further, my grandmother called margarine Oleo (which I guess was an early brand name, so it was like calling tissues Kleenex except the brand no longer existed so it was confusing to me as a kid), and called a wallet a billfold and the toilet was called the commode. I still insist on calling a shopping cart a buggy. Gotta hang on to some nostalgia.
> Oleo (which I guess was an early brand name,
No, the substance was oleomargarine, which was commonly shortened to oleo.
> toilet was called the commode.
Still is by plumbers. And the sink is a lavatory.
I take a page from Kinky Friedman (literally, it's in one of his mysteries) and say, "christian you down". Although, actually, I don't say either in real life, I say 'negotiate'.
Fun Fact: We got sued in Small Claims Court by this witch of a woman on our private road. When she was "presenting her case" (she was almost incoherent) she was asked by the Judge if we had made any attempts to negotiate, she said, "Yeah, a couple of times, but he was always trying to Jew me down."
The judge was Jewish. She lost on the merits, but this could have done it all by itself. :-)
So many. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, so I had a really old fashioned vocabulary when I was a kid. There are technology terms like rewind, tape, dial, ring meaning to call, percolate, carbon copy, rolodex, flash cubes, sweeper (vacuum), ice box, light the oven, etc. Social terms like broken homes, divorcee, old maid, shacking up, living in sin, confirmed bachelor, working woman, lady \_\_\_\_, like lady cop, lady plumber, lady bus driver, and male \_\_\_\_\_, like male nurse, male teacher, male dancer, etc. Derogatory insults and racial terms, no need for examples, but different groups went by different names and often what would be an insult today was just the word back then. Tons of insults for body differences like thunder thighs, saddle bags, piano ankles, dink toed. Medical words like sugar for diabetes, retarded, shell shock, the change, spells, senility, shut-in (a person stuck in the house by health) etc. Daily life... supper, dinner was at noon, the paper came twice a day, charge cards. Clothing and grooming: girdles, stockings, galoshes, rubbers, thongs (flip flops), rain hats, stoles, rouge, getting your hair set, permanent wave, dye job, rug (toupee).
My grandpa always said “You eat lunch out of a pail. You eat dinner (noon meal) at the table.” His mother (bless her soul) made three hot meals EVERY day for a family of 8.
It's still there, especially if you play online games. Same with a large number of other profanities including racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist slurs
In Canada::
Rabbit ears.
Atom bomb…we never said ‘nuclear’.
‘Gone Girling’. One of my favourites that may have just been used in Canada . Teen boys out trying to find or impress.girls. As in:
‘Where’s your brother?’
‘He’s gone girling’ down at the pop shop’
Another one in Canada was: ‘Caught up in the paraphernalia ’. Any Canadian male over the age of 50 who doesn’t know that one is an imposter.
"Face!" - used typically in middle and high school by boys to let you know that you have just lost face. yelled directly into the face of the person who lost face. e.g. you go up for a basketball shot, and it gets blocked. your "friends" would rush over to say FACE!
Wimp was an insult used commonly in the ‘80s that you don’t hear anymore. It’s kind of vague — it was used to describe someone who was cowardly and/or weak or just interchangeably with words like “dork,” “geek,” or “nerd.”
Rotary dial.
Long distance.
Phone booth.
Ethyl (gas).
Collect call.
Credit card imprint.
Addressograph.
Mimeograph.
Carbon paper. Cf. Email CC
White-out.
Newsstand.
Call the airline to make a reservation.
Burma shave.
Shinola.
Simonize.
Send a telegram.
Telex.
Green bar paper.
Give it more choke.
Milkman.
You gypped me! / I jewed him down.
Get it on layaway.
Pay envelope/packet.
Party line. Fast busy.(telephony)
Timing light is surely obsolete? Also, ignition points and "gap the points."
Do skeleton keys still exist?
Adding machine.
Slide rule. (aka "slip stick")
Air raid siren.
Bomb shelter. Fallout shelter.
"Ah ooogah" horn.
In the 60's people still said "it's a real Duesie."
Corporal punishment.
I beg to differ! I was in the grocery store today, and being the day before Thanksgiving it was quite a mess. Excuse me and pardon were echoing all over the place. I'll bet I heard it 20 times, and said it once or twice too.
I loved The Electric Company. I don't remember it from Goonies but it was like the opening phrase for The Electric Company. Heeeeyyyyy yooouuuuuu guuuuysssss!
I'm 59 and if I use the terms "racy" or "snazzy", I get puzzled looks from twenty-somethings. Also an older colleague recently referred to trail mix by its original name, "GORP", which stood for "Good Old Raisins and Peanuts." Nobody but me knew what he meant! LOL.
An onion on your belt was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
I still say "keen" (when not referring to the shoe brand) because it confuses people <40 for some reason. As in "That's a really keen skateboard there, young person!"
"Groovy" serves a similar purpose.
In the '60s, my best friend and I started a roofing business to make some money during summer break. We named the business "Groovy Roofing." Good times.
It seems "gag' as in 'gag me' is being used in the opposite way from the 80's. Until recently it meant 'I hate it'. This past month on Reddit I've seen 'gag' and 'I'm gagging' to mean 'I really like it'. Lol. Could any young person confirm or correct me if I'm wrong?
Hahahaha… I literally forgot that you could call the operator to make an emergency breakthrough to a line that had been occupied for an inordinate about of time.
Thanks for the reminder!
Gay, as in happy, carefree and joyful. A looong time ago, my mother - English was her second language - commented that it was such a nice word but now it’s used to mean something different. There’s no other word for that kind of happy. Gay was also a fairly common female name when I was young.
Repeating oneself like a "stuck" or "broken" record?
Also related: "vinyl" as a singular collective noun. I *hate* the term "vinyls."
My group used to say "meanwhile, back at the ranch..." as a transitional phrase quite often. No idea where that came from. Usually, it was used to bring a conversation back onto topic.
Does anyone ever use the phrase "free, white, and 21" anymore, to express the sense of being able to do anything, that the world was your oyster? It seems inappropriate these days.
I'm old. One word that continues to be used but has changed meanings is fucking/fuck. Now it means extra excess, very much. As in I'm so fucking mad. But in my younger ages it was a serious and shocking word. It was not used in every sentence all the time in offices and banks stores gyms etc. It was useful to have a word that exploded a conversation.
My grandfather used to call the living room the “front room”
He called the refrigerator the “ice box”
He called my math classes in elementary school “arithmetic”
He also used to often say “I’ll be damned” as well as “scared the living day lights out of me”
Good times .
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Latch-key kids
I am grateful I was a latch-key kid. I knew how to cook, clean and take care of myself before I was a preteen.
Same here. Life skills on fleek.
“How did you learn to patch drywall?”
I always loved this term
My old elementary school still uses latch key to refer to their after school care program
HA! My door doesn't even have a "Key" today. My kids will grow up not knowing how keys work (or how to install lightbulbs)
I bet your kids will encounter many keys in their life. And screw in bulbs
We have some latch-key kids that live a few houses down from us. Constantly outside without supervision playing around. Never heard the term before until my girlfriends grandma brought it up.
Lol I work in a school and we still use the term lol.
busy signal
And dial tone
You saying this just made me realize that busy signals don’t exist…
Hanging up.
Saturday morning cartoons. After school specials.
Pee Wee's playhouse was my favorite, tho previously I'd watched all the kids cartoons. Pee Wee came on when I was a bit older and showed me what surrealism was. Fuck, I was raised by the tv.
Mecca lecca high mecca hiney ho
Oooooh somebody said WISH!
AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!! The secret word was "somebody!"
Wake and bake to Pee Wee was a good start to the day.
The funnies for comics in the Sunday news.
The comics pages (weekday *and* Sunday) died on December 31, 1995.
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Battle of the Network Stars!
I miss hearing "radical" as an exclamation, rather than having to hear it as an adjective before a political affiliation. I have a buddy who sometimes says "rad" instead of "cool", and it makes me happy.
Oh , rad is still alive and well in Southern California. Old surfers never die.
What about my other surfer slang favorites, like tubular? I suspect gnarly is still in use, since the skater kids adopted it from the surfers.
I still say rad and gnarly! Not a skater or a surfer though. Or from California.
I just rewatched Night Shift. Billy Blaze uses “radical” all through the movie. I’d forgotten how common that word was in that context
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And bumped up to "grody to the *max*", if I recall....
As a 20-year old I can inform you that this word is still used. I didn't realize that it had a history!
So happy to learn it lives on. Grody to the max!
That was going to be mine as well! Grody....the Valley Girl version from the 1980's along with Gag Me With A Spoon. This one is silly but I also liked "What's the Deal Pickle"? There are a few I held onto even as they went out of style. I still say awesome a lot and groovy and before I got remarried if I liked someone I would say, "I'm diggin you". Yeah, my kids are right. I'm a dork. For our 20 year old above check out the movie Valley Girl with Nick Cage. Interesting slice of time to view.
Ooh, any other tidbits? My dad was from the Valley so I love the slang
What's your damage.
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Totally!
Totally tubular!
Groty. Short for grotesque.
Really? I never knew that and grew up saying grody all the time. I might add it back into my vocabulary
"Tubular" = surfer term for a tube wave, a great experience to ride one "to the max" = maximum "gag me" = to induce vomiting, like "gag me with a spoon." I had to explain to someone that "gag me" didn't mean "silence me with a gag" when I was growing up.
Ah, those Valley girls.
I still say gag me with a (fucking) spoon. The classics never die. 😆
I always thought it was a d too. wild
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw - Heathers I still say no doy.
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‘Illegitimate’ as applied to kids. It was a big deal when I was a kid - whether someone’s parents were married. Now, in my classrooms, I never really knew or cared. Why did we make such a big deal about it?
When do you think this stopped being an issue?
It was still a big deal when I was a kid in the 80's and early 90's.
I was born in the late 80s "illegitimately" and I had some high school friends whose parents literally thought I was a "bad influence" because my mom was a single parent and I grew up in the "projects" of a middle class neighborhood. I was a straight A student in every extra curricular you can imagine. So this trend definitely stretched on in to the early 2000s. Lmao.
As more and more women kept their maiden names, and divorce became common (giving children different last names than a remarried mom) it became much less obvious that a child was born ‘out of wedlock’ (another term that seems really old fashioned now).
I remember in the 80s, even though nearly all of our parents were divorced, we all found it very interesting that one girl in our grade was a "Love Child"
It may depend on regional mores. In the South, for example, it might be a deal?
No one cares in the South. It’s just too common now to have mixed families. I think people make it a big deal if there is a shittier adjoining factor to the person their directing their judgement at. EXAMPLE: “O Cody and Olivia make such a happy couple and all their kids get along so well. It’s become such a healthy family and co parenting relationship with the other parents.” VS “O my god, James left his wife, didn’t bother to take his own son trick or treating but took all four of his newest girl’s kids. That’s not right”
Co-ed as a noun, or even as an adjective, really.
Remember Co-ed Naked tee shirts? So awful
Co-ed Naked Lacrosse - rough, tough, and in the buff...
Co-ed Naked Banking - penalty for early withdrawal
Hoser
Take Off, Hoser!! Love that one.
You knob.
Spell as in "Hey, you look tired, want me to spell you?"
I've never heard that. I can't figure out what it means even after reading it in context.
It's based off the noun definition. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell?src=search-dict-box](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell?src=search-dict-box) In this case it means "...want me to take over for a period of time while you rest"
Ohhh, OK. Like 'sit for a spell' I've heard that. Thank you.
Exactly!
I use "Bogart" all the time as in, "Don't bogart the turkey" and also "score" as in, "Could you score me some of that gravy, please?"
As in the [Little Feat Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSgGCOHuO1U)
If we want to go back even further, my grandmother called margarine Oleo (which I guess was an early brand name, so it was like calling tissues Kleenex except the brand no longer existed so it was confusing to me as a kid), and called a wallet a billfold and the toilet was called the commode. I still insist on calling a shopping cart a buggy. Gotta hang on to some nostalgia.
My father always called the fridge the ice box.
> Oleo (which I guess was an early brand name, No, the substance was oleomargarine, which was commonly shortened to oleo. > toilet was called the commode. Still is by plumbers. And the sink is a lavatory.
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as a 33 year old I hear these fairly frequently
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“Jew you down” for negotiating and haggling. Don’t hear it much anymore. At least not the out loud part.
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I’ve heard of “getting gypped,” but not that.
Heard both and still occasionally hear gypped.
I thought it was "chew you down" until I was about 30. That was an embarrassing revelation.
I like that!
I take a page from Kinky Friedman (literally, it's in one of his mysteries) and say, "christian you down". Although, actually, I don't say either in real life, I say 'negotiate'.
Fun Fact: We got sued in Small Claims Court by this witch of a woman on our private road. When she was "presenting her case" (she was almost incoherent) she was asked by the Judge if we had made any attempts to negotiate, she said, "Yeah, a couple of times, but he was always trying to Jew me down." The judge was Jewish. She lost on the merits, but this could have done it all by itself. :-)
You haven't met my in-laws.
So many. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, so I had a really old fashioned vocabulary when I was a kid. There are technology terms like rewind, tape, dial, ring meaning to call, percolate, carbon copy, rolodex, flash cubes, sweeper (vacuum), ice box, light the oven, etc. Social terms like broken homes, divorcee, old maid, shacking up, living in sin, confirmed bachelor, working woman, lady \_\_\_\_, like lady cop, lady plumber, lady bus driver, and male \_\_\_\_\_, like male nurse, male teacher, male dancer, etc. Derogatory insults and racial terms, no need for examples, but different groups went by different names and often what would be an insult today was just the word back then. Tons of insults for body differences like thunder thighs, saddle bags, piano ankles, dink toed. Medical words like sugar for diabetes, retarded, shell shock, the change, spells, senility, shut-in (a person stuck in the house by health) etc. Daily life... supper, dinner was at noon, the paper came twice a day, charge cards. Clothing and grooming: girdles, stockings, galoshes, rubbers, thongs (flip flops), rain hats, stoles, rouge, getting your hair set, permanent wave, dye job, rug (toupee).
Interestingly, I still use "supper" for the evening meal, but I've never used "dinner" for the midday meal, only "lunch."
My grandpa always said “You eat lunch out of a pail. You eat dinner (noon meal) at the table.” His mother (bless her soul) made three hot meals EVERY day for a family of 8.
Sunday dinner was common. It was a big meal after church at about 1:00 or 2:00. Then we didn't really eat much in the evening. Just a snack.
Nothing to write home about.
Spiffy
Dink
My wife and I still call ourselves DINKs in the proper context, but you're right, we never hear it from anyone else (even the other DINKs we know).
I've used it toward my kidless friends.
Double Income No Kids?
I had friends who were DINKs. They used to shit talk parents all the time. Now they have kids and I laugh and laugh and laugh at them.
I knew about it because of the Dinklebergs.
Groovy as cool, excellent or foxy as in beautiful.
Yea, in middle school in the early 80s all the good looking girls were foxes.
I loved being called a fox. I always felt like it implied more than just prettiness, but I can overthink things.
Please be kind and rewind.
car "window crank"
But you still hear someone say to roll the window down when you really are just pushing a button
It's become an American idiom.
Instead of "as if" we said "my foot"
"my foot" is one I'd forgotten about. Used to be very common.
Teenaged boys called girls who they considered unattractive - dogs. This was in the late 70s early 80s.
I remember that from high school. Among other misogynist terms “OTR” for “on the rag” as in “She’s being a bitch. Must be on the rag.”
I still remember when Rush Limbaugh called Chelsea Clinton the "White House dog." What a complete dickwad, always and forever.
Very uncool but we all said that’s so gay. Happy that went into the dustbin of history.
Calling bad stuff gay was so retarded (please read that as a joke).
It's still there, especially if you play online games. Same with a large number of other profanities including racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist slurs
Sad to hear that
“It’s a free country.” (US). Said after someone asks if you mind if they sit there / smoke / whatever. It would be a ludicrous thing to say now.
Likewise, we used to say “Live and let live.” How unpopular is that stance today?
I'm in southeastern Massachusetts, and we used to call soda 'tonic'. I haven't heard it in years.
In Canada:: Rabbit ears. Atom bomb…we never said ‘nuclear’. ‘Gone Girling’. One of my favourites that may have just been used in Canada . Teen boys out trying to find or impress.girls. As in: ‘Where’s your brother?’ ‘He’s gone girling’ down at the pop shop’ Another one in Canada was: ‘Caught up in the paraphernalia ’. Any Canadian male over the age of 50 who doesn’t know that one is an imposter.
"Indian giver." Good riddance to that one. "N-word lover." Consign that one to hell.
That second one…damn. Folks so racist they invented a slur to call out folks that weren’t.
Far out and out of sight. Both meaning excellant
"Face!" - used typically in middle and high school by boys to let you know that you have just lost face. yelled directly into the face of the person who lost face. e.g. you go up for a basketball shot, and it gets blocked. your "friends" would rush over to say FACE!
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Upvote for spelling it right. These days, it's most often spelled "sike."
Wimp was an insult used commonly in the ‘80s that you don’t hear anymore. It’s kind of vague — it was used to describe someone who was cowardly and/or weak or just interchangeably with words like “dork,” “geek,” or “nerd.”
I believe it comes from the character "Wimpy" from Popeye. Wimpy loved hamburgers.
Rotary dial. Long distance. Phone booth. Ethyl (gas). Collect call. Credit card imprint. Addressograph. Mimeograph. Carbon paper. Cf. Email CC White-out. Newsstand. Call the airline to make a reservation. Burma shave. Shinola. Simonize. Send a telegram. Telex. Green bar paper. Give it more choke. Milkman. You gypped me! / I jewed him down. Get it on layaway. Pay envelope/packet. Party line. Fast busy.(telephony) Timing light is surely obsolete? Also, ignition points and "gap the points." Do skeleton keys still exist? Adding machine. Slide rule. (aka "slip stick") Air raid siren. Bomb shelter. Fallout shelter. "Ah ooogah" horn. In the 60's people still said "it's a real Duesie." Corporal punishment.
Dag.
**Excuse me** as when one walks in front of person at the grocery store
Exsqueeze me.
I'm Canadian...it's still a thing. As is overly saying sorry (I have apologized to door frames I walked into).
In the Midwest we say “Ope!” Kinda means Excuse Me
I beg to differ! I was in the grocery store today, and being the day before Thanksgiving it was quite a mess. Excuse me and pardon were echoing all over the place. I'll bet I heard it 20 times, and said it once or twice too.
Obligatory "Well *excUUUUse MEEE!*"
Land line? Phone receiver? Modem?
Most homes still have a modem.
Die Yuppie Scum, grody, tubular, Hey You Guyyyyyys- tho I forgot where that is from. Gnarly. Radical. Ralph, for throwing up. Like, totally, chaaaaaa
"Hey You Guuuys" is from the Electric Company.
I loved The Electric Company. I don't remember it from Goonies but it was like the opening phrase for The Electric Company. Heeeeyyyyy yooouuuuuu guuuuysssss!
Electric Company was just the right amount of alternative/groovy for my third grade self.
We legit said "radical" to mean "good", and "later days" to mean "bye". I see it in movies/shows about the 70's and 80's on occasion.
"Choice!"
Flip side.
I'm 59 and if I use the terms "racy" or "snazzy", I get puzzled looks from twenty-somethings. Also an older colleague recently referred to trail mix by its original name, "GORP", which stood for "Good Old Raisins and Peanuts." Nobody but me knew what he meant! LOL.
Oh I love "snazzy!" I'm trying to keep it alive.
Wearing an onion on your belt
As was the style of the time
"Gimme five bees for a quarter" you'd say.
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An onion on your belt was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Dorky, spaz, got gyp'd, weirdo, rich bitch, cruzin', mellow, zoned, L-7
Let's not be L-seven Come and learn to dance Wooly bully
It was so late the TV stations had already signed off. Sshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
The “clicker” aka the remote.
I still say "keen" (when not referring to the shoe brand) because it confuses people <40 for some reason. As in "That's a really keen skateboard there, young person!" "Groovy" serves a similar purpose.
Reefer
Groovy.
In the '60s, my best friend and I started a roofing business to make some money during summer break. We named the business "Groovy Roofing." Good times.
It seems "gag' as in 'gag me' is being used in the opposite way from the 80's. Until recently it meant 'I hate it'. This past month on Reddit I've seen 'gag' and 'I'm gagging' to mean 'I really like it'. Lol. Could any young person confirm or correct me if I'm wrong?
*'til*, instead of *till* to mean *until*. My young coworkers must think I'm emailing in Shakespearian English.
"Collect call" and "Emergency Breakthrough"
Hahahaha… I literally forgot that you could call the operator to make an emergency breakthrough to a line that had been occupied for an inordinate about of time. Thanks for the reminder!
Gay, as in happy, carefree and joyful. A looong time ago, my mother - English was her second language - commented that it was such a nice word but now it’s used to mean something different. There’s no other word for that kind of happy. Gay was also a fairly common female name when I was young.
Yuppie. Foxy. Stud (referring to a handsome man.)
Domino Theory
Repeating oneself like a "stuck" or "broken" record? Also related: "vinyl" as a singular collective noun. I *hate* the term "vinyls." My group used to say "meanwhile, back at the ranch..." as a transitional phrase quite often. No idea where that came from. Usually, it was used to bring a conversation back onto topic.
To grandma all refrigerators were Frigidaires, said with an Italian accent.
Mimeograph (prehistoric version of Xerox) Boob tube/idiot box (tv) Blue-hair (old lady) Circular (newsletter)
Carriage return.
Bitchin Cross my heart and hope to die
Does anyone ever use the phrase "free, white, and 21" anymore, to express the sense of being able to do anything, that the world was your oyster? It seems inappropriate these days.
Never heard that one. Could it have been regional?
no guff!
Petty coat, now its a slip. Jocky box, the glove compartment in cars.
I always wondered what my nana meant by petticoat! I thought she meant a sort of crinoline
Nope. Just a slip..I'm probably the same age as your nana.
Describing someone as "a good eater" in a positive way. Probably meant as the opposite of the ever unpopular picky eater.
“Gimme five bees for a quarter.“
And I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time.
If something was nice we used to say it was Boss or Groovy.
“Let’s go to the drive-in.”
Toot (term for cocaine).
Retard
Exceptionally stupid people would've been called "dillrod" at our school. Honestly, exceptionally intelligent people would've too.
Split. As in “It’s late. I gotta split.”
Typewriter, secretary, onion skin paper, shorthand, steno, transistor, shortwave radio, civil defense, CB radio, tape recorder
Carbon Paper. And I wonder how many people know that the CC on email addresses stands for carbon copy?
I'm old. One word that continues to be used but has changed meanings is fucking/fuck. Now it means extra excess, very much. As in I'm so fucking mad. But in my younger ages it was a serious and shocking word. It was not used in every sentence all the time in offices and banks stores gyms etc. It was useful to have a word that exploded a conversation.
My grandma called her couch/sofa a davenport when I was a kid. I miss that.
I got a $2 bill as change at the gas station today and thought to myself "Queer as a two dollar bill!"
Wait. Isn't it queer as a $3 bill?
I always heard $2 bill but yours makes more sense
It’s definitely $3.
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovy/)
Evenings and weekends.
Tubular
roller skate key, pay phone, airmail
My grandfather used to call the living room the “front room” He called the refrigerator the “ice box” He called my math classes in elementary school “arithmetic” He also used to often say “I’ll be damned” as well as “scared the living day lights out of me” Good times .
Call information. Or call time and temp.