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

Maister

Maister

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My grandparents on both sides of the family used to refer to margarine as "oley". I didn't know why until my father explained that back when they first introduced margarine it was named "oleomargarine" or "oleo". Oleo was originally a white-ish paste and a frightened dairy lobby got a bill passed that required manufacturers to include the yellow die seperately to be mixed in by the consumer so that 1. consumers would KNOW they weren't buying real butter and 2. make it look disgusting so folks wouldn't buy it to begin with. Apparently, the law changed afterwards.

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I guess my grandparents never got the memo 50 years ago that said it was supposed to be called 'margarine' (perhaps just as strange is the fact that we say 'pass the butter' at Chez Maister regardless of whether one is referring to butter or margarine).

My grandfather also used to refer to a couch as a 'davenport' and my great grandmother used to refer to the living room as the 'parlor'. Perhaps these terms are still in common usage and are simply regional variants but my initial impression is that the terms have fallen into disuse (at least in the midwest).

I wonder what archaic terms I am guilty of using thanks to changing technology and times? It occurs to me that I referred to a word file saved on a 'floppy disk' the other day. They probably don't even manufacture those 5" flexible disks anymore.
Do/did your grandparents ever use archaic vocabulary?

Other than the previous example I'm sure I never use any archaic language. Well, I'm off to send a wire to the Prussian ambassador in Siam....
mrburnsqj1.jpg
 
Wisconsin once prohibited the retail sales of that stuff, resulting in many residents makeing 'oleo-runs' to surrounding states, just like during the 18th Amendment days.

My late father always referred to the antenna of a TV or radio as an 'aerial'. He said that and not realizing what he meant I would sometimes respond with 'hunh'?

Also, tell someone that when he/she keeps saying the same thing over and over that he/she "sounds like a broken record".

Speaking of floppies, I'm constantly surprized to see 90 mm floppies still available in office supply Big-Boxes. I haven't seen the flexible 120 mm ones in years, though. With the increasing capacity and falling prices of flash-memory USB 'thumb' drives (now up to 4Gb for about $80, last I saw), I am fully expecting 'Zip' disks to disappear within the next couple of years, too.

How many out there even know what a 'fifth' is? It is the old standard sized liquor bottle in the USA, supplanted by the 750 mL bottle in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It was 1/5 of an old USA gallon.

How many Canadians know what a C$1 banknote looked like or what they were like to use? Ditto C$2 notes for the even younger Canadians.

Mike
 
My grandparents used a lot of terms you don't hear much today - a few that come to mind:

  • "Valise" for a suitcase
  • "Dungarees" for jeans
  • A refrigerator was always a "frigidaire," no matter what the brand

Once in awhile my grandmother would slip and use "victrola" for a record player -- er, a stereo system (guess my own old age is showing there!)
 
My dad still calls every soda "tonic."

That's the lone one I can think of.
 
Speaking of oleo... I was baking a cake using one of my mom's old recipes. It called for oleo and I had no clue what that was. My wife didn't know either, so I had to call my mom.

That recipe now has a strikethrough that says "butter/margarine".
 
Does anyone ever announce that they are going to "dial" someone up on the telephone? Man, I miss those good old substantial-feeling Western Electric rotary phones one used back when telephone services were provided by "The" phone company!
 
Suburb Repairman said:
Speaking of oleo... I was baking a cake using one of my mom's old recipes. It called for oleo and I had no clue what that was. My wife didn't know either, so I had to call my mom.

That recipe now has a strikethrough that says "butter/margarine".
Click to expand...

I also anticipate that as time passes, younger USAians will be becoming much more familiar with such measures as grams, liters, etc and much less familiar with the old non-metric ones. Product packages are steadily becoming more and more 'rational' metric and with the increasing globalization of markets, import/export efficiencies, etc, along with the forthcoming EU metric directive (after 2010, it will be verboten to sell a product at retail in the EU if it has any non-metric measures in its size declaration), we will get to the point where our descendants will no longer be able to prepare recipes unless the quantities are given in those units. "Gramma, what's a 'cup'?" "Gramma, what's a 'teaspoon'?" (etc.)

Mike
 
Fat Cat

When I was working for a consulting firm, we had a number of clients in the "hinterlands" and I would hear phrases similiar to these. The one that threw me was "ice box". Since the area had three seasons- winter, July and August. (this is what the locals told me) a lot of visions went through my mind as to what an "ice box" could be.:-| This terminology went back to when they chopped ice from the frozen lakes and stored the ice in ice house and then put the ice in "ice boxes" in the summer to keep food and drink cold. Then I found out that this is now the refrigerator, but still refered to as the "ice box". I also listened to the obituaries on the local radion station. :-D There were no local news papers. Not much else to do when I wasn't working. This was within the last ten years:-D
 
mgk920 said:
How many out there even know what a 'fifth' is? It is the old standard sized liquor bottle in the USA, supplanted by the 750 mL bottle in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It was 1/5 of an old USA gallon.
Click to expand...

I say fifth, but never knew why it was called that.

I don't use these words unless trying to be a dork:
davenport or sofa
blouse
trousers
sneakers
There's more, just can't think of them right now.
 
Maister said:
My grandparents on both sides of the family used to refer to margarine as "oley".
Click to expand...

My parents call it "oleo." Maybe because of their age, and possibly because they're Buffalonians, they call many products and businesses by their old or original names.

DVD = "tape"
Bus fare, train fare = "carfare"
Any store or restaurant name = the name that was used at that location 30+ years ago.
Nightclub = "casino" (In the 1940s, Buffalo had tens of prominent bars and nightclubs that were named "[Something] Casino")

Ask someone over 70 what a "safety" is. :D

BTW, I've got several old Western Electric phones at home, including a couple of dial phones. Love 'em.

Metric system: learned it in elementary school instead of traditional English units. When talking with Canadians, I use metric units; they're usually shocked to hear them come out of the mouth of an American. I find that in common speech, Canadians use metric for temperature, both metric and English units for volume, and mostly English for distance and area that involve real estate and personal measurements.
 
I love my granpa so much. God bless him he's going to be 89 next year.

He uses the phrase "It's good for what ails you" in reference to anything I wouldn't eat as a kid.

I have heard a few references to Caster Oil in the past.

He still pumps the gas pedal before starting the car, even though it has fuel injection.
 
I still call the plastic butter substitute, oleo.

Go pick out some penny candies, those single candies on the bottom shelf? They are now 10 & 25 cents

and we have an icebox, but it doesnt need defrosting.

crikey's, we dial the phone too. None uf us r txtng yet.

:-D
 
mgk920 said:
I also anticipate that as time passes, younger USAians will be becoming much more familiar with such measures as grams, liters, etc and much less familiar with the old non-metric ones. Product packages are steadily becoming more and more 'rational' metric and with the increasing globalization of markets, import/export efficiencies, etc, along with the forthcoming EU metric directive (after 2010, it will be verboten to sell a product at retail in the EU if it has any non-metric measures in its size declaration), we will get to the point where our descendants will no longer be able to prepare recipes unless the quantities are given in those units. "Gramma, what's a 'cup'?" "Gramma, what's a 'teaspoon'?" (etc.)

Mike
Click to expand...

It's no secret that we Americans resist adopting the metric system. But we all know that this resistance to change is quite rational. Why, just the other day I wrote a paper on this very topic. It included a lengthy paragraph, nearly 29 barleycorns long, about how we would be abandoning our unique heritage by adopting the metric system. I grew so upset while writing the paper that I needed 20 drachms of whiskey to calm my nerves. Unfortunately I had no booze around and the nearest liquor store was over 1800 rods away. Even though I could stand to lose a stone or two, I ended up driving the distance.
 
Maister said:
Unfortunately I had no booze around and the nearest liquor store was over 1800 rods away.
Click to expand...

The mennonites I worked with used chains and rods to measure everything.

The other liquor measurement i always wonder about is a "mickey". Then we have 26'ers.


I say "going to the show" to mean the movies, people find it odd.
 
I have a great uncle who is in his 90s. He uses the term "trading" instead of shopping, as in "What grocery do you do your trading at?" I'm sure it comes from the time period where people actually traded things like butter, eggs, meat and other stuff they raised for items found in town at the store.
 
I don't think I ever met any of my grandparents. But, fortunately for you, my dad is old enough be my grandfather, so I knew all kinds of archaic crap growing up.
Two examples which come readily to mind:

In high school, I was the only one in my advanced placement English class full of brainiacs who knew what "husbandry" was -- and that it wasn't about marriage. (duh!)

I got my arse (note the archaic word for @ss) chewed once for mispronouncing "strap". It is pronounced strop when you are referring to the long piece of leather that barber's sharpen their straight edge razors on. (GET IT RIGHT, GIRL! :-| )
 
Pop v Soda

ssnyderjr said:
Don't you mean POP???? It's only Soda along the East Coast.
Click to expand...

Ah, 'tis a topic we've enjoyed discussing at length.
http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8853&highlight=pop+soda

Related to this point, however, I wonder if anyone has ordered a 'sasparilla' down at the drug store lately?

I once worked at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store and an elderly fellow referred to me as a 'soda jerk' (I've never heard the first word in connection with a description of myself)
 
"Party Line" -- nope, kiddos, it doesn't refer to politics or frats/sororities :)
"settee"
"hassey" or "hassock"
"from away" - May be extremely regional, not sure
"raise (lower) the glass"
 
Maister said:
I once worked at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store and an elderly fellow referred to me as a 'soda jerk' (I've never heard the first word in connection with a description of myself)
Click to expand...

Hey, I worked at Baskin-Robbins too, in high school.

My grandma calls the couch a davenport, and calls her laundry room the utility room, which always confused me when I was little. My husband and his entire family call vacuums "sweepers", which drives me crazy, cause to me a sweeper is an entirely different thing, that isn't motorized.
 
Maister said:
Does anyone ever announce that they are going to "dial" someone up on the telephone? Man, I miss those good old substantial-feeling Western Electric rotary phones one used back when telephone services were provided by "The" phone company!
Click to expand...

I was just talking about this over the weekend with someone - cosmic.

We had one of these ten pound phones with the 4 prong plug until I was in high school. I remember dialing my father's office as a kid which was all 8s and 0s. There was nothing more frustrating than your finger slipping while dialing that last 0...

So, yeah, "dialing" a phone number. Also thought about "don't touch that dial" or "turning the channel" on the TV - dial? turn what now?. I still call CDs albums. I talk about "writing" an e-mail.

My gradnparents used to talk of the "davenport" or the "chaise" when referring to the sofa and "going to the pictures" to see a movie. Corner stores were generically called the "five and dime"
 
cch said:
... and calls her laundry room the utility room, which always confused me when I was little. My husband and his entire family call vacuums "sweepers", which drives me crazy, cause to me a sweeper is an entirely different thing, that isn't motorized.
Click to expand...
I thought sweeper was just a Western PA thing. My wife and her family all refer to the vacuum as a sweeper. They also call closets "cupboards" which confuses the heck out of me because I thought cupboards were the same as kitchen cabinets.

So would calling the trunk of a car a "boot" be archaic or just a southern?ism I've yet to hear it called that since moving to the North.
 
Maister said:
...My grandfather also used to refer to a couch as a 'davenport' and my great grandmother used to refer to the living room as the 'parlor'. Perhaps these terms are still in common usage and are simply regional variants but my initial impression is that the terms have fallen into disuse (at least in the midwest).
Click to expand...

"Parlor" seems completely normal to me. I never even thought of it as old fashioned.
 
When Jack (my 3 y.o.) was pitching a fit because he'd watched too much tv, and I was turning off Backyardigans, I told him not to worry, I was "taping" it (on our DVR).


My grandmother pronounces most stores in the posessive form. She goes to Walmart's, or Kmart's for lightbulbs.
 
According to my late mother...

A couch is a davenport
Oleo was anything resembling butter in a cube.
Dial that number for me!
Aerial or array for the roof antenna.
Afghan was a blanket.
Any type of medium used for music was called a record, the CD player was a record player.
Utility room is the laundry room.
Socks were stockings.
A movie was a show.

That's all I can think of for the moment.
 
Does anyone else recall when phone numbers used to be expressed by the interchange and then the last four digits?

Like when I was a kid our phone number was Twinbrook 9 - 1137. I don't remember how to dial Twinbrook anymore. That style of remembering phone numbers seemed to go out about the time of push-button phones.
 
Most older people in Buffalo use the verb "set" where "sit" is used.

"Why don't you set down?"
"I'm going to set down for a bit."
"It's time to set down for dinner."

I don't know if that's just old-timey usage, or old-timey regional usage.
 
otterpop said:
Does anyone else recall when phone numbers used to be expressed by the interchange and then the last four digits?

Like when I was a kid our phone number was Twinbrook 9 - 1137. I don't remember how to dial Twinbrook anymore. That style of remembering phone numbers seemed to go out about the time of push-button phones.
Click to expand...

The first two letters were for the numbers, so TW=89. I think the system really started to die off when you didn't need an operator anymore, but still in the anolog dial age -I'm 46 and nobody in my family used that system when I was growing up.
 
Downtown said:
Or "by" instead of "to". As in, "I'll be back, I'm just going by Aunt Joanne's for a minute."
Click to expand...

Hey, I talk like this. :-{ And I'm only 29. Maybe it is a midwestern thing.

I remember when I was little and we only had to dial 5 digits to call someone local. My parents had a rotary phone up until about 3 years ago, in addition to a cordless phone in another part of the house. They aren't totally backwoods :-D .

My grandma calls all television shows "programs". i.e.: "I really like that Martha Stewart program."
 
JNA said:
They were "exchanges" and parent's phone number was ADam 2 - ####.
Click to expand...

When I first learned the phone number where I grew up, we learned MI4-xxxx. I don't know what the "MI" stood for.

My mom still says icebox and sometimes I do, too.

And I also say "going by so and so's house" instead of "to".

My mom calls the CD player in her house "the stereo" (just like the cassette player before it) but the CD player in her car is always "the radio".
 
Zoning Goddess said:
When I first learned the phone number where I grew up, we learned MI4-xxxx. I don't know what the "MI" stood for.

My mom still says icebox and sometimes I do, too.

And I also say "going by so and so's house" instead of "to".

My mom calls the CD player in her house "the stereo" (just like the cassette player before it) but the CD player in her car is always "the radio".
Click to expand...
The stereo in MY car is a HIFI

smagadsc0.jpg
 
SW MI Planner said:
I say fifth, but never knew why it was called that.

I don't use these words unless trying to be a dork:
davenport or sofa
blouse
trousers
sneakers
There's more, just can't think of them right now.
Click to expand...

They don't call 'em davenports anymore even here - - in Davenport.
 
TOFB said:
They don't call 'em davenports anymore even here - - in Davenport.
Click to expand...
[ot]
I think that Davenport HS (if there is one called that) should name their mascot the Ottomans.

Yes.. i'm retarded.
[/ot]
 
boiker said:
[ot]
I think that Davenport HS (if there is one called that) should name their mascot the Ottomans.

Yes.. i'm retarded.
[/ot]
Click to expand...

[ot]And Champaign, IL HS mascot should be a wino - maybe call them 'Da Bums' or some such?

I smell a new thread coming on....[/ot]
 
I don't know of any archaic words, but I do know of some archaic sayings. There are several things you will hear from my grandparents, and many other older black persons raised in the rural deep South:

- "in a 'rectly," meaning very soon or directly;
- many people are still familiar with "yonder" or "reckon";
- "like 40 goin' north," meaning going very fast (I have no idea where this came from)
- "sack" for bag, although you will hear this in the Ohio Valley, too.
 
Thought of a few more that people still use on occasion.

Radar range = microwave oven
Ditto = photocopy
Haberdasher = men's clothing store (Still seen in many zoning codes.)
Kresge's = Kmart (Yes, I've heard people call it that!)
Car phone = cell phone

I used to use a zoning code that referred to tippling houses, houses of ill fame, and jook joints. The Buffalo zoning code allows one milch cow by right on any residential lot.

Do women still get The Curse?
 
My family calls their cousins, their cousints, with a t on the end. Not sure where that comes from, or if we are just hillbillies....
 
[ot]
Dan said:
Radar range = microwave oven
Click to expand...

We had an actual Amana Radarrange growing up (and i grew up in the 80s and 90s). It still works at our cabin, it is HUGE and has a dail system to make it work. I think we have the original Radarrange cookbook that came with it. [/ot]
 
Along with the rotary dial for your telephone....
Remember when you had to get up from sitting to change the channel (rotary tunner dial) on your tv.
 
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