Do you remember these words?
Posted Saturday, January 27, 2018 08:04 PM


                     Do you remember these words?
 

 

Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Murgatroyd?

Heavens to Mergatroyd!

Lost Words from our childhood:
Words gone as fast as the buggy whip!
Sad really!

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’

Heavens to Betsy!
Gee whillikers!
Jumping 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 shoesand pedal pushers...AND DON'T FORGET.. Saddle Stitched Pants

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 great phrases gone? ( My Favorite) "Let's all go to the beach Saturday"...

Long gone:
Pshaw,
The milkman did it.
Hey! It’s your nickel. (or dime).
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.
Wake up and smell the roses.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills.
This can be disturbing stuff! ("Carter's Little Liver Pills" are gone too!)

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 aging.

Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth ...

See ya later, alligator!

Okidoki