Terms Which Have Disappeared

We had a neighbor whose mom used to say to her kids or any kids that where whining about something - "You want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about." She delivered it in a variety of manners from half kidding, which meant, "hey, stop whining," to dead serious delivery, "which froze you in your tracks and you darn sure stopped whining."

 

One of my own mom's favorites.

Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk

 

I heard that one a lot from my Dad! I knew it was time to "shape up, or ship out!"

 

Another warning phrase I used to hear is "You're on thin ice, boy." Probably used more in the Northern climes, but universally understood. It was especially effective if your foot had ever actually broken through thin ice in shallow water and gotten a "soaker".

 

Around our family there was no mincing of words: "Stop (whatever you were doing) or I'm gonna kill you."

 

Yes, the great "ice-phrase", I've learned from Al Bundy, on german tone! I like it so much.

 

My dad used to say "if I have to stop this car and beat your ass, you're gonna be sorry you came on this trip."

 

I might've heard that a time or two.

My own kids might've too.

Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk

 

My mother didn't bother to stop the car. She'd have her left hand on the wheel and her right fist would be swinging around the back seat, and it didn't matter who got hit as long as the message was conveyed. Ah, happy days.

 

Happy childhood?

 

Pretty much standard for the time and place.

 

My dad also used to say "the best thing you can do is..." It might be "...go to your room", or maybe "...shut your trap". My sister once replied "yeah, well what's the next best thing?" Once.

 

My mom's favorite was, "You're going to have a rude awakening!" She said it constantly throughout high school, intimating that I'd find going off to college a far more difficult experience. I never had that particular rude awakening! (I did have rude awakenings later... as a homeowner, parent, divorced parent, son of two parents declining into dementia on different tracks, etc.)

 

"Whizbang" seemed common growing up in the '60s / '70s but almost never hear it now (and FL's auto spellcheck keeps changing it to "whizzing" on me - which means "to move swiftly or make a sound like moving swiftly," not what I was thinking it meant ).

 

A Whizbang was the name given to a type of German shell in WWI. Don’t know if it the word was coined by the soldiers or they just appropriated it and it had been used for a firework or something like that in the previous century . Pinning things like that down is difficult. But the word is a lot older than the sixties. Even as an slang word.

 

Hence the popularity of "Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang," a magazine of rude humor very popular with World War veterans in the twenties.

 

Good info - thank you. Well then, I guess it had a good long run as it seems to be all but done now.

 

I always thought that it was odd that they mention that publication in "The Music Man" as Professor Harold Hill's adventures in River City clearly predate the Great War.

 

Can't remember if it was brought up in the previous 100+ pages, but "crackerjack", meaning something of high quality. My grandmother used it all the time, describing everything from Hank Greenberg to (very rarely) the job I did scrubbing her window awnings.

 

Just used "Bamboozled" and realized two things: (1) I have no idea where / when I picked the word up and (2) I haven't heard it used in a long time.