Received Ideas in Quotes 40

The Emperor is naked, there is no Santa Claus, I don’t believe in fairies and I loathe Big Brother.

There are no guidelines. It is perfectly ethical to ringfence parts of the discourse. There is no “evidence based” set of current ideas. There’s an official set. You can say anything apart from “human beings can’t change sex”. 

All minorities have a voice, everybody has a voice – apart from them, them and them. This is not contradictory. 

Optimism is official. You can’t say “Well, it never worked for me”, it’s so rude. Whatever group you belong to, you must shut up.

Optimism must not be contradicted because we need to give everybody hope. Ideas are tested on the probable outcomes of believing them. 

And Mark Twain invented the expandable bra strap. (It looks like he did, too.)


Medieval people regularly cleaned their mattresses, they actively combated fleas and were terrified of bad smells so did everything to  avoid them.

They had pillows. Blankets were washed more than once a year.
Livestock didn't live in the same room as the people, they lived behind partitions.
If you survived childhood you had a good chance of living into your 60s, 22 wasn't really middle-aged. Thatched roofs keep rain out very well.
They had curtains, especially around beds.
They had toilets, outhouses, seats over cesspits, not just buckets.
And no, they didn't toss it into the street.
There were strict laws against it and people had noses, they didn't want that filth in their streets.
There's no evidence for 'gardlyloo' till long after the middle ages.
Its not French for watch out below.
Streets weren't really open sewers.
They had gutters that were for liquid waste like grey water only. 
Public latrines were very common.
@fakehistoryhunt


New ideas are in fact a change in the brain. (@tathtrod)

Monet’s Poplars series almost didn’t happen because the trees were about to be cut down. So he purchased them until he finished painting, then sold them back. (@artistmonet. He had the train schedules changed so that he could paint them, too.)

Perhaps only great men have destinies. (Said a philosophy professor to me once.)

I keep saying the Bible not only has books missing but King James rewrote it in several versions for financial gain. The Vatican is responsible for so much of this evil. They just changed things to fit their narrative of dominance over humanity. (@PeggyDodson)

My English teacher in secondary school was Jewish. She told my class that when her dad came to England he didn't speak English very well, all he could day was I am a free man, so they recorded his last name as Freeman. (@Trixie696775)

The Three Wise Men of Gotham were feigning madness to avoid taxes. (Weren't there some long-sought Mafiosi who feigned Alzheimer's to avoid recognition?)

Reminds me of the apocryphal story of Bazalgette building London's sewers. He did all the maths to work out flow rates and required pipe sizes based on population size, then thought "hang on, we only get one chance to dig all this up". So he doubled every single diameter. (@GazTheJourno)

Archaeologists have found a real treasure: a medieval toy production site! Quite touching and another reminder that the old idea of medieval children being treated as adults and not having a childhood is nonsense. (@fakehistoryhunt. That was middle-class, mid 20th century children.)

Many people falsely believe that we all begin life as females, before hormones transform some of us into males. But the past few decades of genetics and embryology have debunked this. (@zaelefty)
 
William Holden, the lad just signed for the coveted lead in 'Golden Boy' (1939), used to be Bill Beadle. And here is how he obtained his new movie tag. On the Columbia lot is an assistant director and scout named Harold Winston. Not long ago he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Winston was one of those who discovered the 'Golden Boy' newcomer and who renamed him—in honor of his former spouse! (George Ross of Billboard magazine, according to IMDb/Wikipedia. When it's common knowledge stars have changed their names, the studio's PR department puts out an origin story.)

Jeanette Helen Morrison said on TCM that Van Johnson was responsible for her stage name. While they were filming The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947), he suggested she shorten her first name to Janet. He also thought that, since the film they were doing was a Civil War drama, Lee would go well as her last name. But then he suggested she spell it Leigh. (Via FB)

I have been told that when standard Lithuanian was formulated in the 19th century they purposely archaized it. (@razibkhan)

Ever immigrant to this country is here at our discretion. They are privileged to be able to live here. They have no right to, and our discretion can be waived whenever we want for whatever reason we want. (@reggiedunlopno4. There is no two-tier citizenship.)

Our local department store used to have ‘men only’ evenings before Christmas & Valentine’s Day when they could go and buy lingerie as gifts for the lady in their lives. One employee told me about 90% of it was returned by said ladies after the day. (@Dearkens.

In Tuvan language, spoken in the Republic of Tuva located northwest of Mongolia, the terms 'songgaar' (going back/future) and 'burungaar' (moving forward/past) suggest a unique perspective: the past is perceived as being ahead of them, while the future is seen as behind. (@FedeItaliano76. This either shows that we are advanced and enlightened now, or that the tribes know a thing or two and we should copy them.)

In schools, history teachers teach that the Catholic Church is bad because it hid the Bible for a long time. (@profSPedro)

Reality is what we make of it, how we interact with others, and how they react to us. There is no one singular way to exist in the world. (@rejserin)

We were talking about age gaps in marriages in the olden days. @Ingold321 has an answer: Rome-focus (their soldiers had huge age gaps because the military forbade marriage while enlisted), aristocracies, and the desire to present our own time as more enlightened in all ways likely extended the reach of the myth.

@ContraireSous adds that we’re looking at Roman society because “that’s the culture that ushered in monogamy”.

Couples have basically always been within 5 years of age. Some people genuinely believe age gaps were all like 15 years until 1970. (@CartoonsHateHer)

Why do judges break their pen after a death sentence? (@ChrisEjiofor5. Others add: Goes back to the Mughal era, “The pen just signed someone’s fate, it can’t be used again.”) 

My in-laws, for their entire lives, believed that if you get sunburnt you should rinse it with HOT water, in order to open your pores and allow the radiation to escape from your skin. They taught their children this. Imagine my husband’s relief when I told him this was insane. (@Katherine111594)

I grew up in a house like this.  Don't use ice in your drink, you'll get a sore throat. Imagine my surprise at how good ice cold water tastes when my husband debunked that myth. (@kellercre8s. It used to be that ice in your drink in the tropics would give you diarrhoea – possibly because the ice cubes were made with unboiled water.)

Ivy-leaved toadflax growing on an Oxford wall. Its 17th century name was ‘Oxford ivy' or 'Oxford weed’ because it was thought to have arrived from Italy via the packaging of a marble statue destined for an Oxford college garden. (@beatricegroves1)

The phrase ‘to wing it’ as in ‘to improvise’ comes from 19th-century theatrical slang where it meant ‘to study a part in the wings having undertaken it at short notice’. (@qikipedia)

For non-southerners, the Southern accent can be perceived as uneducated or “bad” English. Actually the Southern accent comes directly from British Received Pronunciation and aristocratic society. (Lingoda.com. The only thing the two accents have in common is non-rhotacism – posh Brits don't roll their Rs.)

Type was thrown into the Thames by apprentice compositors from the London School of Printing. Too lazy to distribute, or 'dis' the type back into the typecase, it was put in your pocket and dropped in the Thames from the nearest bridge. (Peter Stephens. Wouldn’t they eventually run out of type? Another theory: it was thrown down the drain. In reality, one of the creators of Doves type refused to share it with his partner, and threw it all into the Thames near Chiswick. Mudlarkers have been retrieving it ever since.)

A whelm is a wooden drain pipe, a hollowed out tree, whelmed down or turned with the concavity downwards to form an arched watercourse. It is where the words ‘underwhelmed’ and ‘overwhelmed’ come from. Lara Maiklem (Dictionary says it means "overturned".) 

I think it is more accurate to say a Votes for Women was won despite civil disobedience. The suffragists managed, during the Great War, to win back a lot of support lost by the suffragettes during their 1900s and 1910s campaign. (@WalkerMarcus)

Part brass rags: This expression is explained in W.P. Drury’s short story the Tadpole of an Archangel (1898): When sailors desire to prove the brotherly love... with which each inspires the other, it is their custom to keep their brasswork cleaning rags in a joint ragbag. But should relations become strained, the bag owner casts forth upon the deck his sometime brother’s rags; and with the parting of the brass rags hostilities begin. (19th century nautical slang)

I love this grafter (Lothrop Stoddard). He's the one who made up the whole "Africans have no word for maintenance in any of their 3,000 languages. (@RonBabylon. Stoddard was an influential racist in the early 20th century.) 

Trivia fact: in the Middle Ages women got married in red. When Anne of Brittany married the King of France she wore a white dress because white is the colour of Brittany. It became a trend because France was already the cultural trendsetter for the world.  (@pegobry_en)

I was always told “You are a Ship of Theseus, all your cells get replaced, you are an information pattern wave through matter”. Today I learned that most of your conscious brain is in fact the same set of neurons you were born with, aging with you for life, ditto heart and eyes. (@liron)

Robert Tombs said that Victorian Britain became the world's first urban nation, clearly forgetting that something preposterous like 80% of Early Dynastic Sumer's population lived in cities. (Basedwagnerite)

Freakonomics (2005) talked about baby naming and links to socioeconomics. They described new names like Oranjello and Lemonjello (pronounced le-MON-juh-lo and or-ON-juh-lo), but had to make a correction in subsequent editions because these turned out to be urban legends. (@paulmidler)

Before the invention of the lightning conductor, bell-ringers, including monks, were often struck by lightning while ringing bells in church towers. This happened because churches were the tallest structures in a village and also because the metal bells themselves attracted lightning. There was a widespread belief that ringing church bells could ward off lightning, making bell-ringing a particularly dangerous practice. (Google)

I’ve just been told that underneath San Francisco there’s an underground roller coaster. Apparently it takes 45 minutes to get through security and sets of multiple doors. (@TylerAlterman)

More here, and links to the rest.
 

Syndromes 6: Games People Play

Get simply furious because a group or a person, won’t do XYZ spontaneously without being told. At the same time you don't tell them to do the thing, or explain how to do the thing, or draw up a rota, or have a meeting... But then they’d do the thing and there’s be no need for the incandescent fury, which gives you an excuse to be perfectly vile to the group or person.

Annoying neighbour, on the first day of the Iron Age: "Of course we switched from bronze over a year ago, I made DH throw it all in the midden!" (@IanBlandThatsMe)

You’re early for your train so you force your friend to rush across the station, holding a spilling cup of coffee, while you twinkle at station staff to let you through the barrier. You both make it, but at what cost? You are thrilled because you have beaten the clock and much else, once again. 

You detain a friend, promising to drive her to the station, tell her she'll have plenty of time for her shopping. You don’t even have five minutes, and she misses her next appointment. 

If she manages to drag you round the shops while she looks for presents for children, resent the time spent, and suggest rather nasty, kitsch objects she might buy.

Drag your friend round the shops and give her no time to look for what SHE wants. Part of this ploy may be that you want to keep her from visiting the wrong shops, which you’re sure she’ll do if you’re not there to stop her. 

Seek out someone who will believe you when you tell them that everything they do and say is wrong. And everything they post or tweet!

“You don’t need to belittle me, let me do that for you and save you the trouble!” Never works. What to do instead? Don’t be self-deprecating. Don’t make excuses, either, or give justifications. Wait for the belittling to pass with a blank expression but a very slight air of impatience? Pretty soon get up and go home.

In a meeting last week I made a joke about someone being like Columbo. In today's meeting my joke was told back to me like it was theirs. I pretended I didn't get it so they had to explain. Turns out they don't know who Columbo is. (@deathofbuckley)

A instructs B to tell a string of lies to C, for no good reason. It’s just a way for A to establish control over B. A gets B to spy on C and report back.

Make them pay, pay and pay again for some minor infringement. Or for a favour you are going to do them – but you never get round to it.

Lean on me so I can step aside and let you fall.

More unspeakable nastiness here, and links to the rest.

Contradictions 14

Jenrick says 'it's not about the colour of people's skin'. It's just that he didn't see a single white face. That's not even logically coherent. (@David__Osland)

Tragic protagonists are funny because you have Oedipus who does everything in his power to avoid the fate which has unfortunately already been written for him but then you also have Orestes who is joining the war on generational curses on the side of the generational curses. (@corduroycleric)

Never forget: women can't know for sure they're women unless they've had their chromosomes checked, but if a man says he's a woman he's definitely a woman and it is highly offensive to mention his chromosomes, which are entirely irrelevant to whether or not a person is a woman. (@jk_rowling)

TRAs: ‘Trans’ women (men) ARE women and no-one can tell the difference you bigot
Also TRAs: You (a woman) look like a ‘trans’ woman (man). HA HA I am insulting you. HA HA. I am very smart. (@WomensSocIre)

When you're young and getting pregnant usually isn't wise, you're always told how easily done it is and how careful you have to be. When you're actively trying and openly doing so, people will remind you how hard it is and that it usually takes time. Which one is it? (@anon_opin)

Traditional men can’t seem to decide whether women are lazy golddiggers for depending on men for money, or good women for not working and letting men provide. (@ulxma)

There’s this huge disconnect of universities which have ‘trigger warnings’ for Shakespeare and yet allow naked antisemitism to thrive. @nicolelampert

It's extremely funny you'd have the gall to talk about personal liberties in a post declaring that from now on any writer that works for you will parrot exactly the opinion you want... (@MattPolProf. Jeff Bezos, Washington Post)

The person talking about words making people feel unsafe then slags white men off for "fragilities"? How odd. (@rosykaren)

 I do not understand Progressives uncritically supporting the Palestinians who deny equal rights for Women and criminalise homosexuality. (@ThomasDierson)

I love how they claim there are only about 10 gender-critical people in the world and/or everyone is a 'Bot' while simultaneously making massive lists of 'transphobes'. (@OslerMarc)

Why, when people who claim a synthetic sex identity want to pee, there is only a handful of them going about their lives who are no threat, yet when anyone speaks about the harms of the ideology, there are vast swaths of them being murdered and oppressed? (@bjportraits)

Creationist: "I am religious and live by faith. Evolution is a religion that requires faith so it's stupid and wrong". (@grenangle)

I find it endlessly curious that the same people who don’t believe in a higher power have decided gender is some invisible ‘essence’. (@femmehonnete1)

A significant contradiction of male supremacy: women are incompetent yet conniving and manipulative. Women are shamed for having sex yet women owe men sex. (@DrProudman)

It always amazes me how the same people who are absolutely convinced of the power of women's words to hurt trans people are also the ones so skeptical of the danger of men in women's spaces. (@helensaxby11)

More here, and links to the rest.

Contradictions 13

Even when unattributed, all encountered in the wild.

Hey you. Be yourself. But also tone it down a little. Read the room. But also speak your mind. Be responsible with your future. But also take risks, life is short. Kindness is everything. But also you'll get nowhere if you're not fighting. Don't sell out. But also grind/hustle. (@PrinceVogel)

We include everybody except people who aren’t inclusive.

I've had fascinating conversations with media people who say they want viewpoint diversity, but "no social conservatives". (@asymmetricinfo)

It’s academics’ job to be critical about everything – but not gender. 

Childhood: punished for being different, punished for thinking you're different.

If women’s rights are anti-trans then trans rights are anti-women.

Men: Women ought to get married and have babies.
Also men: I'm not ready to settle down.

Feminists used to say that looks don’t matter but you should also wear ugly clothes and no makeup. They also claimed that men would be attracted to you anyway. (They weren't.)

Be spontaneous AND be prepared.

I was overwhelmed with information about how tough it was to be a parent at the same time as I was being told it was the most extraordinary, blissful, transformative rite of passage and that there was no other love like it. That I was, in essence, living half a life by not having children of my own while simultaneously being so incredibly lucky to pursue a responsibility-free ... girl about town, career woman existence. (Article in the Times on infertility)

Saw a post that said doctors being so bad at identifying Autism is hilarious when you consider how good children are at figuring out who's Autistic when they're deciding whom to bully. (Via FB)

Sometimes the world goes through enormous changes and people hardly notice or comment. The rest of the time they write articles (or tweets) claiming the world is going thru huge changes thanks to some trivial aspect. They make far more noise about the second case.

There is a third category – where the world goes through enormous changes and large numbers of people choose to be wilfully ignorant of it, because despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, they don't want it to be true. (@GhostOfOrwell84)

How did “medieval man” reconcile a deterministic worldview (Fortune with her wheel) with Christianity, which relied on personal responsibility? (He didn’t. The church thought the concept of “Fortune” was Satanic.)

A post on Facebook isn’t going to incite violence whatever it says. Meanwhile, words are violence when it comes to saying “Human beings can’t change sex”.

Terfs must be silenced because words are violence and there may be distant knock-on evil effects. But these guys can wave placards saying "The only good terf is a dead terf." 

Why do we sneer at the previous decade and its awful décor and hairstyles when we were the ones sporting the mullets and installing avocado bathroom suites?

“Does my bum look big in this?”, but bum-enhancing injections are a dangerous underground business.

Be as much like most people as you can. AND stand out.

Accept what you can’t change is a popular American mantra, also “You are responsible for everything that happens to you” and “the solution is in yourself”. How does this not clash with the American dream of hustle your way to the top and tread down the other frogs in the bucket? Go west, young man!

The English simultaneously do not exist and are responsible for all historical injustices.

More here, and links to the rest.

Outdated Slang 6

Don't fall behind! Learn the new jargon, but be sure to drop the old jargon.


@edwest Do people not say Gordon Bennett any more? He appears in the book I'm reading and it suddenly occurred to me I probably haven't heard the expression since 1992.

@robpalkwriter Just saw someone complain about "litter louts" which was pleasantly nostalgic, like "juvenile delinquents" "dolly birds" or "video nasties" (Others add social services, bovver boys, vandals and hooligans. Also teenage tearaways and earth mothers.)

…ville (Noirville, strictly squaresville) Replaced by X City after the many shopping cities etc.
“Quite” for yes.

"We can't have a National Health Service – everybody will be demanding free wigs, teeth and spectacles!" Cue hilarious false-teeth anecdotes. Strangely, people got over their objections.

[Statement statement], yes? (Or, even more annoyingly, [Statement statement], no?)

A chip off the old block
A fair crack of the whip.
A penny for your thoughts, or “a penny for them”.
A raft of measures

Abort, retry, ignore (Dialogue on early computers.)
Absolutely chocker! From chockablock.
According to my lights.
Acid test (Was it laughed out of court, like “explore every avenue”?)

Addressing people as “flower”
aficionado (and misspelling it)
All my eye and Betty Martin!

amenities (popular in the 60s) That’s not a pointless patch of grass nobody can walk on, it’s an amenity!

Americans think Brits say “Smashing!” all the time. We stopped years ago, but they carry on. (It was “awful modern slang” in the 50s.)

anally retentive, very anal (Of someone who is very tidy, or keeps their CDs in alphabetical order.) 

And in that order‼!
And not necessarily in that order.

Any joy? Are we winning? (These both mean “How’s the work going and when can we go home?”) 

At this moment in time…
Banzai!
basically
Be your age!
beats the band

berk, wally, prat, twonk, eejit, nana/narner, you silly narner (From banana? Prat peaked in 2010, oddly. So did berk. Wally peaked in the 80s, with another peak in 2010.)

big-boned (of a large girl)

bivvi bag for sleeping bag (From bivouac, French for temporary camp. But I saw “bivvi tent” the other day.)

bobbins for nonsense (Recent. Gone, fortunately.)
 
Bog Irish (Rose steadily from the 40s and only declined from 2008.)

bonking, stonking (80s)
bottom feeders
brass neck for gall, chutzpah

broken home (Like “juvenile delinquent”, it became a joke.)
buckshee for “free” (From Arabic baksheesh.)

Buggerlugs, or “your friend” for a man whose name you don’t know, can’t remember or can’t be bothered to repeat (Very disparaging.)

But you don’t want to compete with men, dear! You’ll lose your femininity! (Femininity never defined. They might have had a point. If you did too well, the men wouldn’t want to marry you.)

buttinski, kibitzer
by hook or by crook (Peasants were allowed to gather wood in the lord's forest "by hook or by crook" – they weren't permitted to saw bits off.)

Calling all (anthropologists).
Calling planet (name of person sitting next to you who hasn’t heard what you said).

Can you beat it?
Can you believe it?

chatterbox, swankpot etc. Became something-head, something-face. 
cheek by jowl
Cheekyface!

cheesy grin (as if saying “cheese” for a group photo)
chock full, chockablock, absolutely chockers

clock for look at (Clock that!), or clock up for chalk up (Transwomen are now getting “clocked” or not. They try to avoid being “clocky”.)

clubbable
coalface

Colour me unsurprised!
concur
constructive (opposite is “destructive”)
coupled with (Especially in fronted subordinate clauses, frequently dangling.) 80s.

crass
culprit

Denigrating marriage and motherhood as it would “turn you into a cabbage”. 70s. Guess what – they all got married and had children anyway. Girls would say they didn’t want to have children because “I don’t want to become a vegetable”.

designer (designer stubble, that’s really designer etc. Is “curated” the new “designer”?)

Diddums! (Very damning, like referring to children as “Little Johnny” or older women as “Aunt Edith” or “your neighbour Petulia”.)

die-away for somebody wet, limp and soft-spoken
discombobulated (70s)
dishy for attractive
do their stuff rather than do their thing

Do us all a favour and...
Don’t you just love it when… (that happens. Gas advert?)

Dot and go one, or dot and carry one for someone with a limp. It was a way of doing arithmetic – you put a dot under the column when you’d carried a digit?

drag: Don’t be such a drag, what a drag it is getting old. (60s)
dumb animals, “our dumb friends”
dumb cluck (insult)

effectively, respectively (popular in the 80s)
elbow grease
elf’n’safety
Eric Clapton is God.

facilitator (Non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical. Rose from the early 60s to a peak in 2002.)
Fantastic!
Fons et origo, parturient montes and other Latin phrases.
food chain (Useful – now we have no word for it.)
for some unknown reason (parody of Victorian or later melodrama?)

for your safety and comfort. (Just received a product with instructions “for your satisfaction and safety”.)

forward-thinking
free collective bargaining

fruition (come to fruition. Perhaps we were put off by people telling us “It doesn’t mean what you think it means”.

full of the joys of spring (Ironic, old quote?)
give it up as a bad job (40s.)

Grody to the max! (Grody peaked 1960 and again mid-80s, “grody to the max” peaked mid-80s.)
Grouts for coffee grounds at the bottom of your cup

Half a jiff, be with you in a jiff. (Peaked 30s. Jiffy peaked 20s and 40s.)
Hard lines! Hard cheese!
Having fun? In a sarcastic tone when you’re burning the toast etc. (60s)

He was a frightfully big pot. (Meaning rich and influential.)
He’s a lovely mover. (Usually ironic.)
hip to the scene
Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!

How are things? Oh, just bumping along the bottom. (90s)
I grant you.
I haven’t just fallen off the Christmas tree, I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-looking.
I like your style.

I should cocoa! For “I should say so.”
I speak as I find!
I’ll drink to that.
I’ll give you what for! (Id est, “I’ll give you something to cry about”.)

I’ve come over all unnecessary!
If not, why not?
If the cap fits…
If you’re lucky… (Ironically.)

Internet: First there was the text-only Internet, then it became far more widespread with pages and pictures and it became the Web. Inexplicably, it is now the Internet again.

Is there an (anthropologist) in the house?
It doesn’t arise, it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t signify.
It must have been meant. (People are still saying this, but they never say WHO meant it.)
It smelt to high heaven.

It was a great boon. (40s. From an advert about a pen being “a boon and a blessing to men”?)
It’s later than you think. (From a song called Enjoy Yourself.)

Jesus H Christ, Jesus Christ on a bicycle, Christ on a bike!

Junk jewellery (now “faux”)
kayo, kayo’d
Keep yer ’air on!
Knock three times and ask for Gertie.

Lead me to it!
Liaison (Perhaps went out because nobody could spell it.)
Like greased lightning

Look what the tide brought in. Or was it “Look what the cat dragged in”?
lumpen (from “lumpenproletariat”)

macho (And arguing about how to pronounce it. Mako? And arguing about what it means. Men had got away with the behavior for years because we didn’t have a word for it, so we borrowed one from Spanish and struggled with it. What a relief we settled on “sexist” eventually. Sharp rise from the mid-60s.)

made a dead set at (a man) (It always surprised me when my girlfriends did this. Showed an unsuspected side to their character. They were probably the ones who told me “You’ll find somebody when you’re NOT looking”.)

main squeeze
moosh for mate with a northern vowel
More power to your elbow!
motor car for car

mousy for a girl who is timid, dull, plain, badly dressed, shy. (Helen Gurley Brown says she can succeed through hard work and determination, also by being calculatingly nice to everybody PLUS going blonde, wearing red lipstick and shortening her skirts. And probably sleeping with influential people. She could be right.)

Mustn’t grumble! It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!
My good man… (de haut en bas, or else very patronising)

my SO for Significant Other (They probably say “partner” now.)

narrative thrust (now “arc”)

Ne’er mind eh. (With a downward inflection and no comma before the eh. From Kent? It was an 80s thing.)

neurotic, neurosis (What we accused each other of being, instead of trying to help.)

Nice work if you can get it.
No peace for the wicked! (Bible)
Not a word of a lie!
Not all there
Now he tells me! (Yiddish word order.)

Oh my giddy aunt!
Oh, what? You what? (70s, 80s)

Ooops, butterfingers!
Paging (unlikely famous person).
pansy for gay man 

pawky for anybody “Scots” – what on earth did it mean? Skeptical, salty, tough, suspicious, feisty? (Peaked 30s, 40s, sharp decline since.)

Pish tush!
plethora (80s. Started rising to its present peak in the 40s.)

practising homosexual (Like practising Catholic. Presumably it was OK to be a closet homosexual who never actually did anything, like the hero of the film Victim.)

proliferate
pristine (Pedants quibbled about its origins.)

Pronouncing madam as modom. Calling anybody madam.
Pull your socks up.
Put off the evil day. (Bible?)
Put on your best bib and tucker.

queer as a coot, camp as a row of tents
reading matter for books 
responding to bad news with an ironic “Great!”

Result!, ‘ooky gear (and similar awful Cockney imitations)
right, left and centre

rumpy pumpy (Came from nowhere mid-80s, peaked 93, sharp fall), bonking 80s (Bonk peaked 1860, bonking sharp rise from 1980 to 2000.)

ruthless
Same difference!
Say “cheese!” (when taking a group photo)
Say when!
Scusee! (For “excuse me”. From Italian “scusi”?)

Sez you!
Shades of X!
She looked like the back end of a bus.

Sick squid for six quid (and squidlets for pounds)
sits well with 

skimp (Some people used it for “I just skimmed the chapter”.)
slatternly
slaving over a hot stove
smoothiechops (Implies a man with a very close shave.)

snark
soft furnishings (chairs and sofas)
soppy date or sloppy date
Stand by your beds! (From National Service.)

streetwise
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Bible. But often you have to make future plans.)

surly (what people were a lot of the time)
surreptitious
sweetness and light (Goes back to Aesop.)
sylph, sylph-like

Ta muchly!
Tannoy: The announcements came over the Tannoy.
Tell that to the Marines! (Answer: “The Marines knows!”)
Terrible imitations of rustics eg the vly be on the turmut.
Thank you VERY much! (In deeply sarcastic tones. Sometimes attached to the end of a sentence.)

that of (Are writers nervous about where to put the apostrophe? Do they think you can’t end a sentence with a possessive?)

The best of British luck!
the bulk of for most of 
the dog’s bollocks (and arguing about its derivation)

The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI)
the hostess with the mostest
the real McCoy (sometimes pronounced McKye)
They didn’t know X from a hole in the road.

They were no respecters of persons. (Paul's Epistles. Implies that they considered everyone equal before the law, or in the sight of God.)

This [thing I don’t like] is a running sore on the body politic. (19th century and earlier)

This I must see! (Yiddish word order.)
This is true for that’s true 

This won’t buy the baby a new bonnet.
thumping lie
titivate (The nuns told us off for “titivating in front of the mirror”.)

To that end, we...
tunny fish for tuna (in case you didn’t know it was fish).
TV reception (now signal)
two-faced

up the wall (for “mad”, or “round the bend”), off the wall for wacky

Upper-class types used to jokily dismiss people, events and subjects with “Well, there you are, my dear”, or “Life’s like that”. They used to put on a silly voice – Lafe’s lake thet. 

used oncers (pound notes)
village maiden, local swain.
wacky (Sharp rise from about 1970.)
Wakey, wakey, rise and shine! 

warpaint for makeup
We’re not getting any forrader.
We’ve all got your number. (Was it a Kenneth Williams catchphrase?)

Weird or what?
Well, I dare say! (Meaning “I don’t believe a word of it”.)
Well, there’s a thing!
wet drip: He's such a wet drip!
What was that supposed to be?
What’s that when it’s at home?

When did explorers become adventurers? 
When did people stop writing “well” after every “may”?
When did rucksacks become backpacks?

When did the royal family stop waving in that peculiar “stirring the air” manner? When did waving become a sideways hand waggle?

Wind your neck in!
wuss
Yerse. (In a dubious voice. Meant “I don’t think!”, like “Ho, yus!” 60s.)

Yes, I dare say. (Implied total disbelief. Also “I dessay”.)
You and me both, cully.
You can’t say I never do anything for you.
You got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning! 
You great steaming nit! (60s.)
You must be out of your tiny mind. (Late 60s.)
You’ve got a dirty mind! (Or “one-track mind”.)

More here, and links to the rest.