Old Fashioned Slang-Gone but not forgotten
Old Fashioned Slang-Gone but not forgotten
I was talking to my kids the other day and said something about how I didn’t want to be an "old fuddy duddy. They laughed at me. What? Why is that funny? Well, apparently by saying that phrase, I was showing I was an old fuddy duddy. It’s an old slang phrase that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades.
That got me thinking about slang. I have always had a fascination for language. Our English of today is very different and almost unrecognizable from the English of a 1000 years ago. Why is that? And where do our slang words and phrases come from? How does one person come up with a new word and soon, a nation is using it? And then why do we stop using a phrase or word? I find all this totally fascinating. I also have a fascination with accents. Of course I don’t have an accent but I love listening to other accents.
I started to think about the slang words that I knew of that are no longer popular. Of course there is groovy which was popular in the early 70’s. Some others I remember are cats pajamas, jeepers, daddyo, sock it to me, far out, gee whitakers, groady. and outta sight.
I asked on twitter and got these: wicked, Groovy baby! Right on! Keep on keepin’ on, cool beans, cool dude/dudette, Far out!, Can you dig it?, that’s a hoot, Gee wiz, dreamy, Jimmy Hill when someone was fibbing, groovy, and bees knees.
Are any of these bringing back memories? We have all been an imaginative bunch over the years haven’t we? So do yall have any to add to the list???
Tags: slang words
May 24th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
stoked, bogus, awesome, tubular, wicked–and yes I still talk like this at 42. in fact, my kids do too
May 25th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I use alot of those words too and so do my kids. I guess some words take alot longer to go out of favor with the population.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
don’t forget 23 Skidoo!