once-common words people don’t use anymore

Varlet

if we're talking ilx, i would say RONG never gets used anymore

you aren't hearing "shan't" much in the US these days, and "shall" only got a stay of execution from Gandalf

xpost it makes you vintage

When I was six it was very common for kids my age to say "keen" to mean cool, great, awesome. And then it seemed as if overnight everyone stopped saying it. (Absolutely nobody said "awesome" when I was six but by the time I was 14 everyone said it). Granted kids often have their own words, but some older people said "keen" also, I'm pretty sure of it.

"Lumbago" was a pretty common term up to and throughout the 70's, to identify any sort of back pain. Archie Bunker and Fred G. Sanford were all over it! Seems like "sciatica" has taken its place.

The G. is for “grebt.”

does anybody say "kneeslapper" anymore

xp
a Canadianism I enjoy is "keener"

xp to myself

I think it was lumbago that had George Jefferson walking on Bentley's back.

"Lumbago" was a pretty common term up to and throughout the 70's, to identify any sort of back pain. Archie Bunker and Fred G. Sanford were all over it! Seems like "sciatica" has taken its place.

cf the Small Faces, "Lazy Sunday"

TIL that that line in "Lazy Sunday" is "How's old Bert's lumbago?"

Always thought it was "How's your bird's lumbago?"

there are words people used to say in the playground a lot that were conflating being silly/stupid with being mentally handicapped. I don't really want to even say what they were, but it always amazes me that these words were common enough to be learned by children. I'm glad I don't hear them any more.

xp to myself

I think it was lumbago that had George Jefferson walking on Bentley's back.

TIL that that line in "Lazy Sunday" is "How's old Bert's lumbago?"

Always thought it was "How's your bird's lumbago?"

"How's yer Bert's lumbago?" surely?

Hm it does sound slightly more like "your" than "old." I just went by some random lyric site... now I see there's another site that says it's "your old Bert's"!

lumbago was a final jeopardy answer a few years ago and nobody got it. the clue: "Adding “P” to a word for a chronic back condition gets you this synonym for graphite or pencil lead". one of the contestants was a latin teacher.

milliner / millinery

Never heard lumbago used in conversation but come across it all the time in medical coding.

you aren't hearing "shan't" much in the US these days, and "shall" only got a stay of execution from Gandalf

At school in the 80s I had a very old English teacher who insited it be spelled "sha'n't"

That’s the Lewis Carroll spelling right

Literally never seen it anywhere else

modals are a fun subject in English, there's been a big shift in their use over the last fifty or so years but as a rule nobody really notices it

(side note: shall as a first-person variant of will is both characteristically English fuckery and susceptible to falling into disuse... the Irish never fell for it, and probably consequently US English isn't super into it either)

Goolies

I imagine hashtag has more or less replaced pound sign except on automated telephone menus, though today I learned it’s actual name is an octothorpe.

goolies is such a Young Ones word

catarrh

actually, there are quite a few outmoded medical terms that once were in common use

All of l33t sp34k

Rascal? Rascal Flatts and Dizzee Rascal notwithstanding, I don't feel like it's a word anyone really uses in common parlance.

No, I still hear rascal used in a lighthearted way.

I still enjoy using 'druthers' but I fear that when I do others may mistake me for a grizzled prospector or somesuch.

was just reading a book where someone was turned down by the army for having flat feet. do people still have flat feet? why are they no longer a problem?

Orthotics are a big industry

And I think the condition is usually called fallen arches now, which at least sounds more poetic

Twitter says this

Studies analyzing the correlation between flat feet and physical injuries in soldiers have been inconclusive, but none suggest that flat feet are an impediment, at least in soldiers who reached the age of military recruitment without prior foot problems. Instead, in this population, there is a suggestion of more injury in high arched feet. A 2005 study of Royal Australian Air Force recruits that tracked the recruits over the course of their basic training found that neither flat feet nor high arched feet had any impact on physical functioning, injury rates or foot health. If anything, there was a tendency for those with flat feet to have fewer injuries. Another study of 295 Israel Defense Forces recruits found that those with high arches suffered almost four times as many stress fractures as those with the lowest arches. A later study of 449 U.S. Navy special warfare trainees found no significant difference in the incidence of stress fractures among sailors and Marines with different arch heights.

Not twitter, wikipedia

what is wrong with my brain this weekend?

I have flat feet. My mum took me to a chiropodist a few times and I had to wear arches in my shoes for a bit but they were fucking uncomfortable so I used to just take them out. It's still unclear to me what the actual problem is tbh, never caused me any issues in my life.

Having never applied to join the army I don't know if it's still a thing.

i have high arches and was told that they contributed to my frequent ankle sprains (no idea if this is true)

don't posties get called flat-footed? I have heard a postie getting called a "flat-footed fucker" before. if you can't shoot people then mailshot them!

long ago in the US, cops who walked their beats were sometimes called flat-foots

lumbago is a great one

lamaze

cruet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHIno814zE

I don't know what 'modal' is, and have never truly understood the distinction between 'will' and 'shall', if indeed there truly is one.

knockers
bristols
whatchamacallit
thingamajig

I remember being annoyed when I heard on the radio that "charabanc" was one of the words being dropped from the OED that year. I had only just used it when swearing at some useless minibus driver blocking up the road with his poxy charabanc.

Modal is just about modifying a verb in terms of intent/likelihood. I've taught it to lower school kids as 'lottery' verbs ie 'when I win the lottery, I might buy this, I could buy this but I will buy that for sure.'

The will/shall distinction feels archaic to me albeit still on the spectrum of intent. That old tale of a man drowning and shouting 'I will drown!' and people thinking, fine, if you're that sure you carry on mush. Whereas if he'd shouted 'I shall drown' everyone would have waded in to help.

I heard someone say 'crivvens' when they tripped up a kerb the other day. A much underused exclamation.

Always assumed”twunt” was an ilx portmaneau, but now words don’t “mean” anything

i think twunt might come from b3ta or possibly before that. it's not from ilx though, just general UK internet

full stop is just British for period so yes it's used all the time

maiden/maid (the latter for anything other than a housecleaner, and even for that becoming less common).

You still hear maiden all the time if you're a cricket fan!

don't forget about twit

twit was roughly equivalent to dipshit afaik

There were plenty of slang words for pudenda that I would've used as a teenager. Fanny, minge, radge, snatch, axe wound...anything but twat.

^^^ revived by the first Avengers movie in 2012!

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=facepalm

what happened to smdh. bring it back.

not come across a 429 error before. JUst got one there. So think I might need to start using an alternative to google.

lmao still hanging on but rofl is in really bad shape these days, sad to see. when was the last time someone even roflmaoed?

I miss pmsl which I thought had real potential but afaict it never spread much beyond UK teens on bebo and myspace

I am very glad the cutesy internet speak of late 00s / early 10s (interwebs etc) seems to be almost extinct though because that shit got unbearable for a while

I was struck by this article a couple of days in the newspaper about a feud between George Best and Bobby Charlton:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/aug/10/the-feud-between-best-and-charlton-that-shattered-manchester-united

Quoth Bobby, "so many young people on the ‘scene’ have the attitude that nearly everything and ordinary people are ‘sick’. They behave as if the peak of senility is reached at the age of 25 and they must wring every drop out of life by then whether they offend other people or not.” (Bobby) goes on to attack those who insist on being “cool”, “gas” and “with it”."

It's interesting how "sick" has come full circle.

Did people use "vouchsafe"? Shakespeare loves it.

Reminds me of a Proust translation where the literal "He did not respond" became "He vouchsafed no answer" in English.

“beetling” to mean looming, jutting up etc most commonly used with eyebrows but have also read it in conjunction with hills, cliffs

Jordan Peterson seems to be the only person in the world who still says "up yours"

Not really the right thread but I couldn’t find a better one:

“Invincible” is pretty common word but in all my 43 years, despite being a big reader, I’ve never heard or seen the word “vincible” until today.