Terms Which Have Disappeared

I know, but I'll disqualify myself for age

 

Dad's root beer had a notorious radio commercial in the years during and just after the war, featuring a conga band and a chorus singing "Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer" to a conga rhythm. Silly, but once it got into your head, good luck ever getting it out.

We had a "Tom's" vending machine at our station, featuring TOM'S TOASTED PEANUTS -- SERVE YOURSELF 5 CENTS, along with other packaged Tom's candies. We had to stop using the machine when the price went up on the products, because the coin mechanism couldn't be set any higher than a nickel, but while it lasted I was very fond of it. The peanuts were extremely salty, which may have been why they could afford to sell them for a nickel long after everything else went up to a dime -- there was more salt in the bag than there were peanuts.

 

Not a chance. The whole concept of a carburetor is foreign.

I had a 1970 Barracuda with a six-pack. What a great car...totaled it on the Maine Turnpike!

 

And a variation on the theme, who remembers what a "deuce and a quarter" referred to in car land?

 

@Fading Fast

Is that meaning "a cube and a quarter dollar"?

 

No,
Its a Buick Electra 225, hence the Deuce and a quarter (pronounced quota!)

 

^^^ I can remember like yesterday being in our local Buick dealership (one of those old town dealerships with 4 cars on the showroom floor and the service area behind it - offices one flight up - and all jammed into a small triangle-shaped piece of land right in town) and hearing men talking about the "deuce and a quarter." As a kid it sounded so cool.

 

On another note, just when did the front page of a newspaper cease to be "the front page" and become "the cover?" Reading my Boston Globe this morning I noticed a reference to "On The Cover," and I had to stop and think a moment to figure out just what they were talking about. A cover, to me, is an outer page with no actual "content" on it other than a logo , picture, a headline or two, or some other attention-catching device. You could call the front page of most tabloid papers a "cover" without being too inaccurate since they've usually fit that description, but a broadsheet paper with actual stories on the front page? That's a "front page," not a "cover."

 

Hold the cover doesn't have the same ring. I didn’t know it had changed. Still called the front page where I live.

 

@LizzieMaine

In Germany , it's still the "Titelseite" (title-page). No one, here, would ever call it "cover" on a newspaper or magazine.

Mostly, it's named "cover" on a longplayer.

 

I don't know when the "front page" became the "cover page" in the newspaper, but I do know I'm living in a world I no longer understand.

 

"I got a hot rod Chevy with the twin carburetors
And I know a gal that's a real sharp tomater
But she's got a daddy with a Caddy that'll date her
You see what I mean?"
-Mr In Between

 

When did Goalies in hockey and soccer become "goal tenders" and "net minders" ? And does anyone still use the term "Boob Tube" when referring to a TV?

 

Only when they're watching Cinemax late at night.

 

Remember the phrase "cock-and-bull" as in a cock-and-bull story, meaning, at least as I used to hear it being used by some of my Dad's friends as, a made-up, fake, BS story?

 

I use that still!

I also still say "now we're cooking with gas", one of my dad's favourite phrases. I used it recently, and the guy I was speaking with said he hadn't heard it in years. At least he'd heard it!

 

Don't know if it's been mentioned in the previous 122 pages, but the other day I used the word "cattywampus" in a casual conversation at work, as in I told a woman she couldn't see something on the other side of the room because she was "sittin' all cattywampus". For those of you not from the South, the term basically means "out of alignment" or "at the wrong angle". The picture on the wall is "cattywampus", or the bolt holes don't line up because the top piece is "cattywampus". Well, I said it the other day in the presence of other coworkers, most of whom nearly hit the floor laughing, except one guy from Scotland. Apparently, they use a similar term.

 

My girlfriend uses the term regularly as she picked it up from her grandmother. She uses it basically the way you do but with a bit of a emphasis on being completely disheveled and not just not aligned. Might just be that was how her grandmother used it. Regardless, love the word. I've thrown it out in a meeting from time to time to shake things up. One in ten people will know the term.

 

A british term, which I like:

"To paint the town red". Means going out and celebrate anything. British humor.