Outdated Slang 6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.)
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.