What odd or old-fashioned words..

[JVL1018]

Thought of more!

Granny always used to say "my foot" and "Goodnight." As in, "You didn't take a cookie from the jar, my foot" and "Goodnight! How many cookies are you going to take?!"

Ohhh, my Gram used to say goodnight! like that. I miss her!
My mom used to say dungarees and I used to laugh at her, I thought it was cute.
My 81 year old father in law calls the Exxon station the Esso station.
Also- He's as queer as a 3 dollar bill(meaning odd not gay).

He also(and my husband too) tells people(family not strangers LOL) to "Go scratch" as sort of a yeah right, whatever phrase. Not very polite. LOL
We all use "He's a good egg"


I use pocketbook and purse interchangeably.
I sit on my stoop all the time-it's the 2 front steps and the landing outside of my house.

Asking where someone is being laid out when asking where the wake is, is pretty common still, I think?
My kids and I both say chalkboards-that's what they have in their classrooms. I have said blackboard and they were confused.

Before we had kids, I used to cook dinner and DH used to clean up and every night after eating I used to say to him, I'm going to retire to the parlor(while he did the dishes)-instead of I'm going into the living room, but it was a joke.

I use some old fashioned words because I try not to curse or say Oh My God in front of the kids, so I say stuff like Good golly! Oh my goodness! Goodness gracious!
I'm cool like that.

 

[Cool-Beans]

oil cloth (linoleum)
stoop (front steps)
ice box (fridge)

Linoleum is now an old-fashioned word, lol. It's called "vinyl" now, as the stuff hasn't actually been made of lino for I don't know how many years/decades.

Stoop is a word I use. What else do you call the stoop?

My father still says "ice box". I don't even notice it, having grown up with it, but newbies to dad comment on it sometimes.

 

[Pikester]

back to add:

spectacles (glasses)
clam diggeres (capri pants)
I reckon (I think)
hankering (craving)
shennanigans (silly happenings, usually naughty but not really bad)

Oh C.Ann this is making me think of my grandfather. I can "hear" him saying all these things

I was at JcPenny a couple of weeks ago and while trying on a pair of pants in the dressing room I could hear someone ask the very young sales clerk if they had any "clam diggeres". She had no clue! (Oh and I'm 36 but my mother and grandmother called them that) I was going to say something when I came out but decided not to.

 

[dislal]

my father in law calls his lunch box a "dinner bucket" I have never heard that. Has anyone else?

 

[tebi73]

My husband's grandmother says:

"finer than hen's teeth" = thin (as in hair)

"if that don't beat a hen a rootin'" = totally unheard of (as in "my goodness")

"sypookas" = a bad storm (don't ask me how to spell it - i just spelled it like it sounds!)

and my friend always says:

"mylanta" = my goodness, oh my gosh

and my grandmother says:

"good land of goshen" = my goodness, oh my gosh

"oopeedoo" = she says this when she is getting up out of her chair, kind of like a grunt

 

[Dixie Luvr 98]

"Tablet" for notebook.

This word (tablet) was used in a question on the standardized test last spring for my 4th grade students. The kids asked me what it meant, but I couldn't tell them. Needless to say, they all got the answer wrong because the term "tablet" was used in the question instead of "notebook." If the question had used the word "notebook" then the kids would have understood the question and most of them would have gotten it correct. I figured an older person had written that question.

I think that question should have been thrown out.

My entering senior year DD and entering third grade son knew what it meant. He even showed me his cursive writing "tablet." Maybe it's regional. Personally, I think of a tablet as being permanently bound on top.

my father in law calls his lunch box a "dinner bucket" I have never heard that. Has anyone else?

My ex-father-in-law, who worked in the coal mines said that. He also referred to working over as "staying in".


Another I remember is pedal pushers for capri or Bermuda length pants/shorts.

 

[PrincessKsMom]

Another one....walkman and boombox.

This makes me have to ask -- how old are you? These are terms from the 80s! I ought to come over that and teach you a lesson, you young whippersnapper!

Also,
Courting -- as in dating
Clam diggers -- my mom still says that.

 

[live4christp1]

One that I always thought was silly that my grandma used to say was:

Oleo instead of Butter

I copied one of my mom's recipes once and searched all over the store for oleo.....

Went back to tell her I couldn't make the cake because I couldn't find oleo at the store anywhere. She laughed so much..........finally she was able to tell me it was butter. She loved to bring that up and tell people I couldn't find oleo at the store.


Here's one: juice - electricity.

My mom & dad remember(mom did/dad still does) not having it as kids. Mom said that they had the recepticles for the bulbs that hung down in the middle of the ceiling when they did get electricity. They were so poor they couldn't afford bulbs for all of them. Her great grandmother came over one day to see one of them without a bulb and told them they better get a bucket under there or all that juice would run out in the floor.

 

[joyjoy]

My dad used to call our lunch boxes "lunch pails", which he thought was a modern term since his parents called them "lunch buckets". He said when he was in elementary school they actually carried a little bucket with their lunch in it.

 

[KristaTX]

Corpse House (funeral home)

Well I'm at least vaguely familiar with probably 99% of the ones on this thread, and I even still say some of them and don't find them odd. But that's one that I have never heard .

I'm going to start shouting "Mylanta!" for "Oh my gosh!"

 

[cinmell]

cellar (basement) - although still popular in some areas

I say cellar.

I don't know if it's old or maybe just geographical but....

Rubbish

I also say rubbish.

"dungarees" instead of "jeans."

I think I'm the only person around that still calls them dungarees or dungees.

My grandmother used to call her purse a "pocketbook" and the couch was a "davenport."

I also call it a pocketbook.

I know some DISers who still call their purse their pocketbook. Mostly the ones from Massachusetts it seems.

Yup, I'm from Boston.

I use ragamuffin all the time to my DS, too!

I tell my daughter she looks like a ragamuffin all the time!

I also call drinks like Pepsi and Coke, tonic. I put jimmies on ice cream, not sprinkles . I order frappes not milkshakes. I know these words are regional but I also notice not as many people use these same terms that I use anymore. For the record, I'm 38 and from Boston.

 

[NHdisneylover]

I put jimmies on ice cream, not sprinkles

See now that is another one that I think is two different things. Jimmies are chocolate flavoured (barely) and brown. Sprinkles are multicolored (or rarely just one color) and have a generic sugar taste. DS will ask for jimmies AND sprinkles on a sundae

 

[cinmell]

See now that is another one that I think is two different things. Jimmies are chocolate flavoured (barely) and brown. Sprinkles are multicolored (or rarely just one color) and have a generic sugar taste. DS will ask for jimmies AND sprinkles on a sundae

My husband says the same thing, jimmies are the chocolate ones and sprinkles are the colored ones. I say jimmies and colored jimmies. We both grew up in Boston, are the same age yet we call them different things.

 

[Conkozan]

Well I'm at least vaguely familiar with probably 99% of the ones on this thread, and I even still say some of them and don't find them odd. But that's one that I have never heard .

I'm going to start shouting "Mylanta!" for "Oh my gosh!"

Corpse House goes back to when most people were laid out in the living room of their own home. Very common in the valley coal mining regions of North Pennsylvania where my grandparents lived. My mom still uses the term.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/38/messages/1852.html

Oh, hanky was another term for handkerchief

 

[Pikester]

My husband says the same thing, jimmies are the chocolate ones and sprinkles are the colored ones. I say jimmies and colored jimmies. We both grew up in Boston, are the same age yet we call them different things.

See now that is another one that I think is two different things. Jimmies are chocolate flavoured (barely) and brown. Sprinkles are multicolored (or rarely just one color) and have a generic sugar taste. DS will ask for jimmies AND sprinkles on a sundae

I call them jimmies too. Chocolate or mixed colors, doesn't matter. We also have grinders at our pizza shop. But, I do get a sub at Subway. Oh, and I'm 36 and from NH.

 

[IDoDis]

I think that one's regional. I just checked with my going-into-third-grader and his friend, and they said they've definitely heard it, even though they usually use notebook. So they would have been OK with it.

I feel for you, though! I have no problem making students come up with an answer on their own, but I hate having to keep quiet when I know they don't understand the question.


I use ragamuffin all the time to my DS, too!

Interesting. Those tests are supposed to be screened for regional words so that the questions are fair. No one out here calls writing pads "tablets" unless they are over thea age of 75. I remember several years ago there was a question on one of the standardized tests asking which would be the fastest way to get somewhere if you were in a hurry. One of the choices was to ride the subway. My kids were . After they were done with the test we talked about it and one student envisioned someone riding on top of a Subway sandwich! Needless to say, we don't have an underground rail system out here.

Oh, BTW, "tablets" (70 count notebooks) are going to be 1 cent each at Staples this Sunday through Wednesday. Teachers can get 25 of them, so stock up!

 

[cristit14]

I say pocketbook! I say purse more -but I have always heard people say pocketbook

My grandmother would say "Fridgidare" for the refrigerator
"step-ins" for panties and growing up I often heard people say "sweet milk" for milk that wasn't buttermilk.

minus the "step-ins" those are things my grandmother used to say all of the time

 

[NJMomma]

English was not my Grandma'a first language, she had some interesting "translations" -

"homogenized" = margarine

"macaroni go away, water stay" = collendar - my fave!

"pooey" = a person of dubious character - ex. "lock the car doors, there is a pooey man there"

I don't know how to spell this but "Ach Da Lieba" = Oy Vey!

again, spelling is phoenetic here, but "bondukies" = potatoes

Her favorite was "only little bit", which was her answer to any food related kind of question, like "Grandma, do you want some roast beef?" "Only little bit!"

"chop meat" is what hamburgers are made out of

cars of course, ran on "petrol"

Ahh, great thread...brings a smile to my face to remember my Grandma!

 

[AshleyW]

I don't know how to spell this but "Ach Da Lieba" = Oy Vey!

ach du liebe .. it's german, the original phrase is 'ach du lieber himmel' and means 'oh for the love of heaven' my great grandma used to say it all the time.

 

[turkeymama]

My daughter laughs at me because I go to the "record store" to buy her music.

My grandmother said "oleo" instead of butter, just like others have mentioned.

She also said "dreckly", which meant "shortly, or a short amount of time". For example, when we were expecting company, she would say, "Aunt Sis will be here dreckly."