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Please pass the 'oley'... (archaic language)

Luca said:
Obsolescence can creep up on you... I still say "record" or "album" to mean a collection of sogns released together (*as in "that's a great album!").... younger people say CD or download, I guess.
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i refer to everything as a "record" when referring to a music album. if im going record shopping i go to the record store even if all i buy are CDs. both of the good local stores actually have pretty big vinyl collections. i even have two turntables at the house and close to 1,000 records (and another 1,000 CD's :-c.) i would honestly rather buy vinyl over a CD or an MP3.
 
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Olde

This Bear has a few submissions, some of which have already been mentioned (by others who may have lived through 12 presidents.....)

Icebox. (I still use this all the time and I now have Katie, young'n that she is, saying it.)
Davenport.
Ottoman.
Record store.
Tranny. (Back when it meant a transmission on a vehicle. :-o)
"The Edison".
78s. (I Have a huge collection that I am converting to CD.)
Cut & paste. (Involved scissors and paste. Morphed into "copy & paste".)
Polaroid. ("Honey, let's get the Polaroid and.....well, you know.....:-$."
Victrola. (One of my Dad's favorites.)

Mandatory subject matter video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naJvr59DJLQ

Video references "telephone exchanges".

Bear
 
How many remember turning on the TV, or especially the radio, and waiting 10-20 seconds for it to start playing? 'Let the tubes (those little glass things that glow) in it warm up (reach operating temperature)'. 'Warm up the TV' or 'Let the radio warm up'.

:)

BTW, I still hear 'ottomans' being advertised all the time, so I don't consider that one to be archaic at all.

Also, how many older people in the USA still refer to dimes, quarters and half dollars as being 'silver', as in (while sorting coins) "separating the pennies and nickels from the silver"? The USA dropped the 90% Ag/10% Cu alloy from those coins, replacing it with the now familiar 100% Cu inside-75% Cu/25% Ni outside sandwich-clad composition, in 1965. (Canada dropped silver from its coins in 1968.)

Mike
 
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An aside: antiquated technology reflected in street names. A few examples common throughout the United States:

* Telegraph Road
* Electric Avenue, Interurban Avenue (streets following old interurban lines)
* Plank Road
* Girdle Road, Girdled Road
* Post Road, Old Post Road
 
I was going through a recipe my grandmother (passed away -- would have been about 95 now) wrote.

It called for "sorghum" and "oleo".

My father clarified that sorghum is an old word for molasses and oleo is a word for margerine.
 
"Hold your horses"
"Your barn door is open, don't let the horse get out."
"Were you born in a barn?"
 
Some more archaic food language:

* Hamburg -> Hamburger
* Frankfurter -> Hot dog
* Red gravy -> Tomato sauce
* Luncheon -> Lunch
 
Now that I'm back in Buffalo, I'm hearing a lot of old-fart English. One that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet: agency. It means "auto dealer" in regular English. "All the Pontiac and Saturn agencies are closing."
 
OF language

"That and a nickle will get you a cup of coffee."
"If you're gonna' dance, you gotta' pay the fiddler."
"A fir piece." (a long distance.)
"Till hell won't have it."
"In a family way."
Cellar
 
Tom R said:
"If you're gonna' dance, you gotta' pay the fiddler."
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THANK YOU! I have always said "it's time to pay the fiddler" for some reason and people mock me and say it's "pay the piper". I like fiddler....does caring about this make me an honorary old fart?
 
ursus said:
THANK YOU! I have always said "it's time to pay the fiddler" for some reason and people mock me and say it's "pay the piper". I like fiddler....does caring about this make me an honorary old fart?
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There's no honor to being an old fart. :-{
 
Not to pick on Planit, but he referred on another thread to regular unleaded gasoline .... I do this myself all the time, but it occurs to me they haven't sold regular leaded gasoline for over a generation, why still make the distinction? Isn't this sorta like referring to radio as the 'wireless' because it was developed after the telegraph? or automobiles as 'horseless carriages'?
 
Maister said:
Not to pick on Planit, but he referred on another thread to regular unleaded gasoline .... I do this myself all the time, but it occurs to me they haven't sold regular leaded gasoline for over a generation, why still make the distinction? Isn't this sorta like referring to radio as the 'wireless' because it was developed after the telegraph? or automobiles as 'horseless carriages'?
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Interestingly, 'leaded' fuel is still available. You can still get it for older collector cars in some places (you can also separately buy 'lead substitute' for use in them) AND, unleaded gasoline/petrol has not been generally approved for use in fueling piston-engined airplanes - the normal fuel used in them is '100LL' (100 octane low-lead).

Mike
 
mgk920 said:
Interestingly, 'leaded' fuel is still available. You can still get it for older 'collector' cars in some places (you can also separately buy 'lead substitute' for use in them) AND, unleaded gasoline/petrol has not been generally approved for use in fueling piston-engined airplanes - the normal fuel used in them is '100LL' (100 octane low-lead).

Mike
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Plus I think you can still purchase a lead additive at most auto parts stores, but my point is that unless one is talking about airplanes or antique autos, it is assumed that 99% of the time 'gas' means unleaded gas. I wonder how long it will take before our language adopts this convention?

I'm curious, does anyone in their 20's normally refer to gas as 'unleaded'?
 
I usually refer to decaf coffee as unleaded and regular coffee as high octane. Anyone else?
 
Veloise said:
And what do us AARPies use to store leftovers?

An ice box dish.
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On my grandparents back porch they had an icebox. During the Depression, the ice man came by to deliver ice. Years later my grandfather had the icebox converted to a fridge. When we came over for a visit we each could have one Coke from the icebox. Memories.
 
Maister said:
I'm curious, does anyone in their 20's normally refer to gas as 'unleaded'?
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Late 20s and no. But I'll tell you what is confusing - the variations of fuel with ethanol! We live in a state where gas with ethanol (89 octane) is cheaper than regular gas (87 octane). We often drive to a neighboring state where non-ethanol gas is cheaper. In the neighboring state the only gas with ethanol is something called E85. So being from a state that subsidizes ethanol, we think it is the same thing. We see the word "ethanol" on the pump and fill up the car. Next thing you know it drives about 10 miles and the car dies. Sweet.
 
stroskey said:
Late 20s and no. But I'll tell you what is confusing - the variations of fuel with ethanol! We live in a state where gas with ethanol (89 octane) is cheaper than regular gas (87 octane). We often drive to a neighboring state where non-ethanol gas is cheaper. In the neighboring state the only gas with ethanol is something called E85. So being from a state that subsidizes ethanol, we think it is the same thing. We see the word "ethanol" on the pump and fill up the car. Next thing you know it drives about 10 miles and the car dies. Sweet.
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E 85 is mostly alchohol with about 15 percent gasoline. You can only burn that if your car was built to be a flex fuel vehicle. :-c
 
I still find myself saying "regular unleaded" out of habit. When I started driving, leaded gasoline had long been off the market in New York state. When I moved to New Mexico for my first planning job in 1989, leaded gasoline was still available at many gas stations.

My dad calls high-octane gasoline "Ethel". I wonder if one gas station chain had Ethel, another had Gertrude, another had Agnes, and so on. "Fill 'er up with Ethel, kid, and make it snappy! C'mon, sonny boy, put some pep in your step! I ain't got all day!"

Here's one for you: "paper boy". Buffalo was one of the last cities in the country to have real adolescents delivering the newspaper. About ten years ago or so, the city's remaining daily newspaper canned the paper boys and paper moms (where the paper boys would pick up their newspapers), and switched to "throw it on the lawn from the window of an old station wagon" delivery.
 
Dan said:
Here's one for you: "paper boy". Buffalo was one of the last cities in the country to have real adolescents delivering the newspaper. About ten years ago or so, the city's remaining daily newspaper canned the paper boys and paper moms (where the paper boys would pick up their newspapers), and switched to "throw it on the lawn from the window of an old station wagon" delivery.
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I will gladly trade.

When they got rid of the 'paper boys' around here (and yes, we still refer to them as such at Chez Maister:-$) they were replaced by the even more deplorable "drive illegally down the wrong side of the street sticking it in the delivery box from the window of an old station wagon" delivery.:-@
 
Dan said:
My dad calls high-octane gasoline "Ethel". I wonder if one gas station chain had Ethel, another had Gertrude, another had Agnes, and so on. "Fill 'er up with Ethel, kid, and make it snappy! C'mon, sonny boy, put some pep in your step! I ain't got all day!"
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"Ethyl" was a brand name for tetraethyllead, or the ingredient that made leaded gasoline leaded. It still exists today. My old 1964 Chevy used leaded gas, and I remember having to trek to the last off-brand gas station to carry leaded gas in the late 1980's to fill'er up. Though it ran well enough on unleaded (until the X-frame rusted through and broke).

I still smile when I hear Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lover's original version of "Road Runner" where he sings:

(Radio On!)
I got the AM
(Radio On!)
Got the car, got the AM
(Radio On!)
Got the AM sound

I remember driving at night and being able to pick up distant AM stations from New York (or wherever), back when there were statons on the AM band that I actually wanted to listen to. Thank you, ionosphere.
 
Concerning 'ethyl', I remember my dad always referring to it as 'supreme' (heck that's what it said at the pump too). You can read about it here.
 
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JimPlans said:
(Radio On!)
I got the AM
(Radio On!)
Got the car, got the AM
(Radio On!)
Got the AM sound
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Related to the thread: people who say "kilocycles" instead of "kilohertz".

Unrelated to the thread: scanning around the AM band after midnight, and finding that about a third of the stations I hear are playing Coast to Coast AM. :(
 
Dan said:
Here's one for you: "paper boy". Buffalo was one of the last cities in the country to have real adolescents delivering the newspaper. About ten years ago or so, the city's remaining daily newspaper canned the paper boys and paper moms (where the paper boys would pick up their newspapers), and switched to "throw it on the lawn from the window of an old station wagon" delivery.
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The local neighborhood paper in my hometown still uses paper boys. But not the big paper, which uses old men in vans.
 
I remember when hoodsies were little paper cups filled with Hood ice cream instead of being sweatshirts with hoods (though I knew those as hoodies).

Only a former New Englander would be thinking about ice cream when it was snowing out.
 
Scanning some family heritage items to send to my cousin, I found a card from my paternal great-grandmother to my father on the occasion of him reaching his "majority".

My son, reading it, said "hey, your dad was in the Navy so he couldn't be a major!"
 
Breadbox

HomerJ just said that something big was about to occur in his life and my first thought was "How big? Bigger than a breadbox?". Then it occurred to me that I hadn't seen a breadbox in years. Does anyone still have and use one? They used to be a common kitchen feature.
 
Anyone still use the phrase "roll the window up/down" when riding in your car? I haven't used a hand crank to open or close a window in years.
 
Richmond Jake said:
Anyone still use the phrase "roll the window up/down" when riding in your car? I haven't used a hand crank to open or close a window in years.
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Yeah I do. I did have a beater car that had hand crank windows and insufficient AC. I loaned my car to a friend, he called me in a panic and asked me how to lower the window. I said there's a handle on the door, turn it!. Scary part is he is older than me by 8 years :-c
 
Don't hear too much about junkies anymore. They're "drug addicts" now.

And that big piece of furniture in your bedroom, aside from the bed - do any of you still call it a bureau?

When I was younger, my grandmother would ask about my boyfriends, in the context of "male friends".
 
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