once-common words people don’t use anymore

There should be a special category for "once-common words people don’t use anymore, but which you adopted at some point as an affectation, and then accidentally made it part of your normal speech," which for me includes both saying "in a pickle" and greeting people with "howdy"

kate, fwiw, one of my best friends edited the Lou Sullivan diaries, and he and i have had some long conversations about the word and how some people become upset when he uses it— but he still identifies as a trans faggot. I’m not trans, but I understand why ymmv regarding the “f” word or the “d” word— my main thing is that self-identification is really important when thinking about language in this way, and I am definitely not “gay” and feel somewhat estranged from current use of the word “queer” except as a general umbrella term. so, for me, fag or faggot it is.

Graduated from high school in ‘86 so I’m deeply Gen-X, and I can state confidently that I’ve never used the expression “necking,” nor can I imagine my peers doing so. It sounds very ‘50s/‘60s to my ears. Maybe we’re talking about a regional difference?

It was always “making out” ftr

yeah i wanna be clear i'm not saying you're doing anything wrong for self-IDing as.. look i'm gonna put one of those spoilers in because i'm gonna get heavy into direct discussion of slurs:

(i'll just say the word a "faggot", i got a friend (who incidentally is a _huge_ fan of the lou sullivan diaries, really inspired by them) who does call herself a "tranny" and i'm 100% behind that, she's reclaiming a term of abuse, she'll really engage with a lot of these idea of reclamation, "brick", "trannyfag", you name it, there's room for that. just - and you know One Thread, this dovetails with my last post to the LGBTQ+ kids thread - to state the obvious, i would take offense if anybody called me personally a "fag" or a "faggot".

"necking" sounds like something from Laverne & Shirley, or American Graffiti

definitely something one does at the malt shop or the drive-in while listening to an early beach boys song

and 'heavy petting' happens at lover's lane

It's funny, the East Bay Hills are chock-full of old lover's lanes - i.e. overlook parking lots with faint parking spot paint, a view of the valley, etc... but they're almost all blocked off and now have tall eucalyptus trees obscuring whatever view used to be there. Not sure why they became obsolete, maybe it's the Zodiac Killer's fault

I don’t know if Brits still use the word snogging but even here in the USA, anyone whose kids have read the Harry Potter books have certainly had their share of that word

Also, all the kids who watched Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging on Nickelodeon.

still refuse to believe that snogging is not a thing you do with your nose

I mean ya CAN

Angus Thongs & Perfect Snogging is the greatest film of all time

we used to call them... ah, shit, the thing we used to call them is probably racist too? and it'd probably still be racist even if i swapped out the words because i don't know that the inuit and/or first peoples actually snog that way

think my secondary school days coincide exactly with harry potter's (1990-1997) and I don't think I heard anyone say "snogging", it was always "getting off (with)" (not that I did any of this during this time, or much at uni for that matter) - just yet another way that JKR's squeamish descriptions of teenage sexuality in 90s Britain are bad and wrong.

"Common Law"

xxxp Is there a quote from Jane Fonda in I think Klute along the lines of 'I don't know how to kiss what do you do with the noses?'
remember it but can't find it. May have film wrong but makes sense since it's rumoured to be a thing that prostitutes don't do with customers.

It's Ingrid Bergman in For Whom The Bell Tolls
"For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

"Where Do the Noses Go?"

Director Sam Wood's film was a version of Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same name, set in Spain during its civil war in 1937.

Before an ill-fated ending, the two main characters experienced a famous kissing scene between them:

expatriate American demolition expert and mercenary Robert "Ingles" Jordan (Gary Cooper), fighting with the anti-fascist Republican (or Loyalist) guerrillas against Franco's nationalistic forces
blue-eyed, short-haired, innocent, rescued peasant woman Maria (Ingrid Bergman), a victim of the conflict

After he cradled her head, she laughed as she told him:

"I like - I don't know how to kiss or I would kiss you. Where do the noses go? Always I wonder where the noses will go. (He gave her a quick peck on the lips) They're not in the way, are they? I always thought they would be in the way. (She kissed him) Look, I can do it myself. (She kissed him again)...Oh, did I do it wrong?"

To prove that she was kissing him correctly, he grabbed her for another kiss."

the Klute thing I may be confusing it with cos it was on the same page of quotes when I saw it is the thing about her offering Donald Sutherland a Freebie and how you could get a perfectly good dishwasher for that.

snog and get off with were both used in the 90s ime although more the latter than the former.

when I was in Dublin in 1996 a girl asked me if I knew what "snogging" was because she thought it was Irish slang that I wouldn't understand (this wasn't a veiled attempt at a chat up line - the context was she was talking to the group about someone snogging someone else)

gett snogged, twenty-three positions in a one-night stand

I thought the Irish used to use the word scone in a similar way to snog, may have been a more localised thing, Do remember it being used when I was in Galway in 90 and I think in Dublin a couple of years later.
Looks like the word shift which is also interrelated may have been more innocent or whatever than I thought. I was thinking of it as had sex with, may have been more got off with. But I'm not sure how these terms translate to a different understanding like bases or similar.

there may have been a shift in meaning with "get off with" yeah - when I was a teenager I told my mum about someone getting off with someone at a party and she thought it meant sex.

As a Yank, I think I first heard the term shift in Rubberbandits song Horse Outside.

I thought the Irish used to use the word scone in a similar way to snog, may have been a more localised thing, Do remember it being used when I was in Galway in 90 and I think in Dublin a couple of years later.
Looks like the word shift which is also interrelated may have been more innocent or whatever than I thought. I was thinking of it as had sex with, may have been more got off with. But I'm not sure how these terms translate to a different understanding like bases or similar.

I grew up with the word "winch" in Scotland, which I always found rather unpleasant. I assume it's from "wench", I'm not sure if that makes it worse.

“pashing” and especially “pash rash” will flush out the gen X Aussies

and 'heavy petting' happens at lover's lane

Also in UK swimming pools

In Minnesota in the early 90s my midwestern college peers said “scamming” meant “making out” (I think, but I’m still not clear) and it confused me as an east coaster.

—-said “scamming” in place of “making out”—

then there are all those old songs that use "making love" to describe what i'd think of as "making out", it used to really confuse me how songs as explicit as that could get popular

my favorite example of semantic shift is the way "cock" used to refer to the female pudenda in african-american vernacular - this is the sense in which it's used in "rotten cocksucker's ball". i'm definitely here for lucille bogan singing about her cock!

'stoned' for drunk, that's old school

It's better than drinking alone

Getting your end away

there's also the term "make whoopee" which always makes me laugh, because who the hell came up with that? did some guy who was getting laid in the 50's yell out "whoopee!!" one time?

1920s, more like. "Makin' whoopee" is old.

I like "tight" for oldschool drunk terms...

Cockeyed

I hate the term 'necking' and associate it with Alan Partridge describing Bond

Jack London always talked about being 'jingled' for drunk, which is pretty good

‘tight’ is my favorite of those terms, too, tho i never use it.

Reminds me: is there a replacement for "uptight"? I can't think of what would be adequate, in a contemporary way. Last time I heard "anal" was in, "Don't get anal about the wordcount," which was advised by Chuck Eddy at the Voice, so a while back.
Oh yeah, "uptight" and xpost Jack London and xpost 1905 use of "gay" reminds me of "Baked beans! Out of sight!" said by someone at a boarding house table, in a turn-of-the-century Jack book.
(R.Crumb got "Keep on Truckin'" from his collection of very vintage 78s.)
Speaking of music writers, haven't noticed one using "albeit" in a while, and don't miss it---but does it have a shade of meaning missed by "although"?

xp - yeah, I don't use it myself but I always enjoy hearing it in old films or such...

xp - yeah, I don't use it myself but I always enjoy hearing it in old films or such...

Don't people still say uptight to mean uptight? Certainly more than I hear "anal" anymore.

Hope so!

At the time of the Stevie Wonder song, did "uptight" mean something like "got everything sewn up correctly"? Because he seems to be unusually excited about being anxious and repressed.

"Tighten Up" probably also related.

yeah, he seemed to mean like, "tighten up/shipshape'---never heard anybody else use "uptight" in that way, rhyming with "out of sight," even!

'stoned' for drunk, that's old school

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, June 29, 2022 1:10 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also, stoned in the 1960s for tripping on acid.

"Uptight" went from a negative word, meaning "tense," in the 1930s, to a positive one, meaning "out of sight," in the early '60s, before whiplashing back to its negative connotation in the late '60s.

There were multimedia performances with the Velvet Underground promoted under the name "Andy Warhol's Up-Tight" in early '66, perhaps playing on the double connotation of the word.

then there are all those old songs that use "making love" to describe what i'd think of as "making out",

I don't know if "making love" ever meant "making out". In old movies it always means "hitting on" or "courting" or otherwise developing a romantic relationship. As in this exchange from Horse Feathers (1932):

Frank : Dad wants me to give you up. You know, you're interfering with my studies.
Connie : Ha-ha-ha. He must think I'm terrible.
Frank : But I think you're wonderful. You're beautiful.
Connie : Are you making love to me?