once-common words people don’t use anymore

"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?

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.

My memory of the early 90s was that to "scam on" someone was synonymous with "hitting on" them; I never heard "scam" without the on used to mean "make out." But who knows what they were up to in the Midwest.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=suet&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csuet%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Csuet%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=creosote&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccreosote%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chilblains&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cchilblains%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hanker&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chanker%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pocketbook&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpocketbook%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=skedaddle&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cskedaddle%3B%2Cc0

Writing may differ from speech

Have vague memories of saying 'laced' for drunk/high... and weirdly, maybe 'draced'? Maybe that was a local thing.

Blootered
Steamin'/ Steamboats
Away wi' it
Stocious
Paraletic (sp?)
Miroclous (sp?) etc

You probably not be surprised to hear there are dozens of words in Scotland for being drunk. However I'm not sure how many of them are still in use, the last time I was up "mortal" seemed to be in vogue. And "goosed".

“shitpiled” was my favorite local term in the early 90s.

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

LOL sorry Matt I'm late to the party, was just coming here to say this one. Honestly it feels like theres loads of Aussie slang from the 70s that americans peobably thing we still say but we just dont, like struth and crikey and pash.

And "rack off".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAgIFeq72oM

the word we (kids/Herefordshire/80s) used to use all the time was "skill" (adj) (or sometimes even "skilliant") - the only time I've heard it anywhere else is in Son of Rambow

I don't think "skilliant" was a thing but "skill" definitely was in Worcester in the 80s

I think "ace" hung on a bit longer

until "wicked" took over

surely not another middle-aged Worcester person on here! (unless you are colonel poo with a new name)

I think 'skill' made a brief appearance round our way but it seemed a bit affected.

Skill very popular where I grew up in west London in the early 80s. Favourite morphing of the phrase was 'skillage in the village'.

i remember "i am skill!" in shropshire in the early 70s

People don't seem to 'chip off' any more (i.e. leaving), that was a big north London thing in the 80s, probably the rest of London too

Do UK people still use 'et' for 'ate'?

Depends where you are in the UK I would imagine.

Do UK people still use 'et' for 'ate'?

I didn't even realize that was a UK thing; I thought it was a Boston/Maine thing, because I think I first encountered it in Jaws (the book) and then later in Stephen King.

I think "ace" hung on a bit longer

― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism)

until "wicked" took over

― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism)

both peak sophie aldred

I didn't even realize that was a UK thing; I thought it was a Boston/Maine thing, because I think I first encountered it in Jaws (the book) and then later in Stephen King.

New England.

wait there's a New England??

Afternoon is just another cinema showtime anymore.

I once texted a young person about "catching a matinee", and they thought it was a typo of some joke about an aquatic mammal.

Never heard 'et' or 'chipping off'.

It’s 23 for all of you; I’ll get tight & make out on the chesterfield with my squeeze if I want to.

Tight as an owl?

Tight is a word my parents used to use. Getting tight at the rugger club dance. Does anyone still say "rugger" apart from my dad?

Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

xp I take it rugger originated at the same time as Soccer and for pretty much the same reasons, like in fact those were the 2 choices.
ONe has become a pretty much technical term for a game and the other has become an archaism with certain class association.
Actually maybe that's 2 main choices with another load of forms of football more localised.

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.

"Scamming" meaning "making out" was a hallmark of late '80s/early '90s South Florida/

'Skill' was still around in the early '90s (Midlands UK).

Only ever really heard 'rugger' in the context of the derogatory phrase 'rugger buggers', indicating posh wankers who play rugby.

'Et' for 'ate' I always thought was just an accent thing rather than a separate word?

Tight is a word my parents used to use. Getting tight at the rugger club dance. Does anyone still say "rugger" apart from my dad?

"I felt a little tight" already seemed old-fashioned when Was (Not Was) used it in "Walk the Dinosaur". Fortunately, they followed that up with an up-to-the-minute Miami Vice reference.

The greatest use of "tight" ever is the way Katherine Hepburn delivers the line, "Unlike my husband, I'd rather be tight than be president."

(State of the Union)

_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._

"Scamming" meaning "making out" was a hallmark of late '80s/early '90s South Florida/

Circa 1992 I heard "scamming on" and guessed that it meant something like "pursuing" or "wooing."

This would have probably been Northeast / Midatlantic collegiate dialect. Spoken in a rough trapezoid bounded by Ithaca, Boston, Chapel Hill, Harrisonburg? Therefore including Princeton, Wellesley, New Haven, Charlottesville, Williamsburg, etc. I don't think it was ever in my vernacular.

But around the same time I remember a separate term, "scope." Like, a "scope" was someone you admired from afar, purely based on their look or fashion sense or vibe or social circle or whatever. The rules seemed to be that you couldn't approach a scope directly. You could not stalk a scope. It was out of bounds to try to figure out their class schedule or their dorm or whatever.

BUT if events transpired so that you met a scope at a party, or you were introduced by mutual friends, then you could proceed as normal to scam on your scope.

Ugh, just typing this stuff out makes me cringe. So glad to be out of that world.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=churlish&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3#
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/churlish

Where I am, "churlish not to" was the next step after "rude not to".

the mp on the radio just this morning said it would be churlish to stop the prime minister having that wedding party at chequers next month because so many other people had had their wedding parties disrupted by COVID. which is exactly the same, obviously

but, yeah, people do still say churlish

The cad.

I'm not Churlish, I'm American

I'm not a churl
Not yet a curmudgeon

Nor a misanthrope

Possibly a crank

I'm not Churlish, I'm American

I hear the Churlish American community is pretty large.

He was an American Churl.

Living with an uptown churl

speaking of which does uptown churl still post?

I came across the word in a NYT article. There was a quote from a classics instructor about Johnson's perception of his instructors or peers, so I knew it was still in use (and the usage seemed apt). I don't hear it used much, but I think I'd still be understood and could attempt a revival here.