I didn't know any of that was obsolete. Well, maybe the submarine races. We don't do much of that in oklahoma but everything else seems pretty much par for the course or what one might expect to hear among the chit-chat Wherever chit-chat happens.
I recently posted a thread about the off-color slang words and phrases we used when I attended High School, 7th thru 12th grades, in 1949-1954. It was intended as a nostalgic documentary about how we high school boys described people and things, but I now admit the thread was inappropriate due to the language we used in those days. Hal
That is a part of the evolution of language, however. I have mentioned in the past some of the words and phrases that were common in American literature in the early 1900s, even in Boy Scout literature, that would be shocking today. Each year, we move further and further. In the case of some of the racial words and phrases that were once common, I would consider it to be progress but, at other times, it might border on crazy. For example, my granddaughter once told me I had used a bad word when I referred to someone as an idiot. Apparently, we don't call people idiots anymore because, I guess, the idiots don't like it. By controlling the language, the plan is to manipulate the thinking, I suppose. I don't know that this is necessarily a bad thing. I guess that depends on what the ultimate goals are. But neither am I convinced that it's a good thing. For one thing, I doubt that I would agree with the ultimate goals of those who are in the forefront of political correctness in America. Although we don't generally hear racial epithets anymore, some of the same people who would denounce anyone using a racial epithet themselves use race to divide. I'm not talking about a private forum here, but American society in general. I think it's a shame that many children will not be exposed to the literature of Mark Twain, and other early American authors, because of their use of words and phrases that were representative of American language in their day, and I think it's even worse when their words are edited. I am younger than you. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, so we didn't use a lot of racial terms. They were there, in the language, and they weren't necessarily shocking, but they weren't words that we used, and they weren't words that I heard applied to people. Perhaps this is because there was no diversity of race among the people I grew up with. I don't know what the language was during that time period in more racially inclusive areas. On the other hand, there are some words that have always offended me, and I wouldn't feel comfortable around people who used them. Probably that's true of most people, although the words might differ.
When I was a teen I still had the thought process that was instilled in my head at an earlier age that men do not curse or act crudely around the fairer sex. It was a thing that we guys could talk about and say anything we wished, just as long as there wasn’t a female present to hear it especially if someone’s mama was around within earshot. It isn’t as if the ladies had never heard the words but gentlemen just didn’t expose them to it simply because it wasn’t deemed proper to do so. Now days though, it seems as if the females of our species are getting more advanced due to a lot of practice using some words in public that until I entered into the military, were only heard occasionally and mostly in bars.
I think the language we use says a lot about us. When I was growing up I had never heard the word f..k, yet now that I'm living with the uncouth I hear it more than any other word.
I look at words like a glass. It's just a word / a glass. It is the intent and emotions we put INTO the word/ the glass which determines if it's sweet or bitter. Sometimes it's just the words we use with our peers and it really has no negative connotation at all. @Hal Pollner
This is a stanza from Robert Service's "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" which I once had memorized in its entirety. "Out from the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare, Stumbled a Miner, fresh from the creek, dog-dirty and loaded for bear. He looked like a man with a foot in the grave, with scarcely the strength of a louse, But he tilted his poke of Dust to the bar, and called for drinks for the House. None could place the stranger's face, and we searched ourselves for a clue, But we drank to his health and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew." (Now I know that Robert Service was a great Poet, but I don't see how anyone could be panning for gold in a creek when it was fifty below zero!) Hal
I would imagine in the current 'politically correct' internet climate, an Administrator has to be careful as to what he/she can allow to be posted.
When I read the post I didn't think there was anything offensive but maybe because I lived thru those years I recognized them as part of those times. I was going to add rug rats, ankle biters, & crumb snatchers but maybe politically correct internet police might not like referring to kids learning to crawl like that. I could try to confuse them by posting the saying back seat bingo. Me experience with that bingo was I didn't win because the back seat of my '54 Ford convertible was to narrow to play.
@Bobby Cole I fell for my second wife, in part, when after I met her, I learned she would not hesitate at all to use the "f" word when deemed necessary! Frank
@Rosie Sinclair I heard it in the 6th. grade, never knowing anything other about it. I asked my Mother! She evaded the question. The word was NEVER uttered in our house, even though my Dad worked every day among a bunch of foul-mouthed shop workers. Frank
@Bob Kirk ......" rug rats, ankle biters, & crumb snatchers" Add "curtain climbers" and "wall climbers". Frank