once-common words people don’t use anymore

I reflect that there are words that remain in one's lexicon but one does not have cause to use very often. So they may seem like 'abandoned words' but are not.

'Gambol' may be one.

Postal Order.

Lobotomy

and probably other discredited medical interventions. You don't hear confused people described as seeming 'lobotomised' nowadays, at least not in the circles I move in.

last clause there is key for anything that i think of as having faded due to becoming obsolete or recognized as offensive within, say, my lifetime and my parents'. odds are someone out there is still using it.

Postal Order.

I just had to redeem some traveler's cheques that were buried in the belongings of a deceased acquaintance, what a palaver. Probably the last ones in existence!

I last used a traveler's check in....I wanna say, 2008?

Another one from psychiatry is “nervous breakdown.” Google results suggest the term made a mini-comeback in 2013 when Oprah Winfrey said she’d had one, but I don’t remember that.

i think this was said upthread, but connected with that: “neurotic”

As I said earlier, older medical terminology that has been superseded by newer terms forms a prime hunting grounds for once common words now seldom used.

Neurasthenic

Hoos

^makes me v sad

i guarantee you "neurotic" and "nervous breakdown" are still in wide use. maybe not in print by people being careful about their language but out there in the wide wide lexicon? absolutely. also "getting hysterical" and the misuses of "schizophrenic," etc.

i would bet there is not a standup comedian in the world who complains about their “neurotic” girlfriend now whereas you couldn’t walk two blocks in the 70s without stumbling over 3 or 4 of them at once.

you have an oddly high opinion of the up-to-dateness of stand-up comedians, imo!

"neurotic" also remains in regular radio rotation thanks to Green Day.

provost

Still in use in Scotland.

https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/lordprovost

i say it literally dozens of times a day but i work in academic administration

plenty of provosts in higher ed

my nomination is: ducky

Are we sure there aren't plenty of duckies in higher ed too?

I'm painfully aware that almost every time I open my mouth I'm using once common words people don't use anymore.

i am pretty sure, yes. first, it's an adjective and second i have worked in higher ed for years and no one says anything is ducky. partially because things are genuinely not ok in higher ed but also bc no one says this word anymore.

OK, it means something different over here!

I'm completely scattershot when it comes to dropping uncommon words into conversation, only some of which were ever in common use. The other day I was gabbing with my spouse and used 'remunerative', but when I'm hiking and meet an on-comer I'm all 'howdy there!'

when i hear a howdy i start feeling pretty remunerative

i am pretty sure, yes. first, it's an adjective and second i have worked in higher ed for years and no one says anything is ducky. partially because things are genuinely not ok in higher ed but also bc no one says this word anymore.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, May 28, 2022 7:40 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a colleague who grouses that "everything is just ducky," but she is a rare bird.

I remember my older relatives using 'queer' to mean odd and nothing else, it was a very common expression in my childhood

There was no word for gay. That wasn't talked about, ever

The children's mystery book "Something Queer Is Going On" (1973) is the only non-queer association I have ever had with the word in my life, I think. Like I really don't remember ever hearing it out loud, although that's the kind of thing where memory could be very unreliable.

The use of "queer" and "gay" in their most common contemporary use predates my birth by decades, but only within the LGBTQ community. ime, those usages didn't achieve their present dominance until I was in my 20's, after 'gay liberation' entered the mainstream consciousness.

In my world 'gay' was a term that was born in the 70s and flourished in the 80s, but I don't remember 'queer' coming into prominence until a couple of decades later

In my admittedly 'outsider' understanding, both "gay" and "queer" have evolved from a more general denotation of homosexuality during the 70's and 80's into the more specialized terms now in modern use. But when I grew up they had zero connection to homosexuality among the general population. They meant "happy and carefree" and "strange or odd", respectively.

I don't remember when I first heard the word 'gay', but I'm sure it was in the 70s and I remember even as a kid realizing that it applied to me.

I and pretty much every other gay person I knew in the 80s hated the word 'queer', it was derogatory. I know that it's been reclaimed and is not viewed that way today, but I still can't use that word

it still feels hurtful to me

I remember walking down Market Street in the 90s with a straight friend and having some yahoo screaming "queers!" at us out of their car window. I took it in stride but he was shocked and insulted

felt in the moment that he got a sense of another world he wasn't anticipating

I have never, ever heard the adjective 'ducky'.

I read loads of Enid Blyton as a kid, so gay meant happy, and queer meant slightly odd, usually with a magical connotation. I actually really love the word 'queer' in its original meaning - obviously I don't use it in conversation but it has a sort of folky otherworldly glimmering sense, to me.

(xp) It's American.

Is it? I seem to recall seeing Marlene Dietrich say it as a Cockney in Witness for the Prosecution, but maybe she was more from the Dick Van Dyke part of London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF_X20zoNJ0
Oh, but then it is not an adjective.

Yes, that's the difference.

"Don we now our gay apparel" was barely snicker-worthy in 1975 but definitely got a juvenile laugh in the 80s.

Circa 1986, at my high school, theater kids were called "drama queers" and chose to reappropriate it. We used "DQs" as a general term for ourselves and one another, regardless of identity or presentation.

(Treading carefully here) "Band fags" were a separate but adjacent group. They also chose to apply it to themselves, with varying levels of irony. A friend of mine who was president of the Sexual Minority Student Alliance referred to himself as "the head fag."

Now have a trans child in high school and the layers are... more complex and nuanced than I could possibly have imagined circa 1982.

One notable thing is that the f-word above has become utterly unspeakable. It's as unusable as the n-word. I don't miss it. No loss, as far as I am concerned, but it's an interesting development.

"Queer" as an LGBTQIA+ catchall appears to still be viable and useful, at least as far as I can tell.

“on the war path”

My third grade teacher said this all the time

I was in third grade last year

Does anybody talk about evacuating their bowels any more?

not since Mario Puzo in The Godfather novel

now everyone calls their shit BM to sound smart