The other day a not-so-elderly lady said something to her son about ‘driving a jalopy’ and he looked at her quizzically and said: “What is a jalopy?” OMG (new) phrase! He had never heard of the word jalopy. She knew she was old but not that old!
Well, I hope you are ‘hunky dory’ after you read this and chuckle.
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’. Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We’d put on our best bib-and-tucker to straighten up and fly right.
Holy Moley!
* * *
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 spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers.
Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.
We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, well 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, go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re gone. Where have all those phrases gone?
Don’t forget to pull the chain.
Knee high to a grasshopper.
Well, Fiddlesticks!
Going like sixty.
I’ll see you in the funny papers.
Don’t take any wooden nickels.
It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff.
We, of a certain age, have been blessed to live in changeable 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 ageing.
See ya later, alligator! I’m supposed to respect my elders, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one now.
Miranda
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