[stylist] A fun article on how language has changed in our lifetimes

[Barbara HAMMEL]

That was cute!
LOL! Another fun one is to tell a cashier they keep the two cents they owe you. Then tell them you just gave them your two cents. The guy at Walgreens yesterday was totally baffled when I told him that times were hard these days so he could just have my one cent worth. And I baffled him even more when I told him my advice was to not take any wooden nickels.
Barbara

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 19, 2015, at 11:59, Applebutter Hill via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Just found this an thought some would enjoy.
> 
> Donna
> 
> 
> 
> WORDS   AND PHRASES REMIND Us OF THE WAY   WE WORD.
> by Richard Lederer 
> 
> http://verbivore.com/wordpress/old-words-and-phrases-remind-us-of-the-way-we
> -word/  
> 
> 
> 
> 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 petting 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! Jumpin' 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 grinder's
> 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! 
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> -- The Heart of Applebutter Hill - a novel on a mission:
> 
> http://DonnaWHill.com <http://donnawhill.com/> 
> 
> 
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