Senior Citizens, what weird and wonderful words, can you recall from your past, that are maybe gone?....?

Coming up to bonfire night and we would go ~Chumping~ for wood, that of course after a game of ~Cog ogg~ which is a variation on hide and seek and seems to be local to North Leeds.

You needed a ball (tennis ball size) and a base point (which I don't recall a name for) The person who was ~it~ threw the ball, and then all the other kids would run and hide while the ball was retrieved, as soon as the ball was caught they could start looking for the ones who had hid, but also had to guard the base, with the ball, if someone tried making the base and the ball was back there before they reached it they were out.

I know it was still being played in the 1980s, try searching the web for that and you will fail, although I did put a mention of the name some years ago on here, under a previous disguise.

We could get on to Yorkshire dialect, which is still used in some areas, one from childhood was ~slahts~ = sticks, as in muck slahts.

We had a skipping rhyme, with Posh translation for our Colonial cousins, and them toffs darn south

We're all darn in t' coil oil, .......... We are all down in the Coal hole (coal cellar)

where t' muck slaht's on't winders ..........Where the dirt sticks to the windows

We're all darn int t' coil oil ...........We are all down in the coal hole

and no one will finned us. ..........And no one will find us

Oh you can't put your muck in our ......... You cannot place your rubbish in our

Dustbin, ar dustbin, ar dustbin ..........Dustbin (Ashcan, Trashcan, Wheelie bin) Our Dustbin

Can't put your muck in ar dustbin ...........(You, redundant noun) Cannot put your waste in our bin

Ar dusbin's full. .........Our dustbin has not been emptied for days.

Meanwhile the rain is coming down in ~Stair Rods~ today.

Wheel-tappers - who checked railway engine wheels with a hammer - same as antique dealers check a china bowl - for any dull thud - indicating cracks.

The old grey whistle test - the proof that if you couldn't remember (and whistle) a new pop tune on the radio/tv a few hours later - it wasn't going to be a 'hit'.

Cobblers and Blacksmiths are presumably Non-PC terms in current day parlance - whereas wicked and dogs bollox have reversed their meanings altogether. And gay, fairy, clubbing and pink have somewhat different connotations - from what I recall, some 60 years ago, Thomas.

Such is the elasticity of English - like, INNIT ?

: )))

Elevator Operator

Theater Usher

Service Station Attendant

Shoe Repairman

Oh yes!

1. Rub Boards...I have seen them in antique stores now and when I was a child I remember them well!

2. Caboose...We no longer have a caboose at the end of our trains and as a result, rarely do I hear this term anymore.

This list could get very long and I will not bore you with further words. I will say I believe the technology during our lifetime has changed a great many words and terms.

Seems every walk of life has their colloquialisms. When I worked in public education we had our "language" that described the students, other teachers, the boss, and so on. Our bus drivers carried "60 head of kids" on their busses!

I'm sure you've probably heard many from the medical profession: "harvesting an organ?" "That doctor's a cutter."

The other day, someone here posted a question about names for ballplayers.

Fascinating!

I remember ladies calling certain other females "lulus"... One family friend had a new daughter-in-law who was quite a character, she remarked "she's a real Lulu".

I called an automatic towel machine in a store that was skipping and stopping "Nelly Bell" and one of the young cashiers looked at me like she didn't understand. I told her there was a TV show with a car the man named Nelly Bell and called it that when he was trying to start it up .

One of my elderly neighbors tells me that in the 1930s when he was a young newlywed in rural Oklahoma (perhaps a redundancy, that) he and his missus were subjected to a "shivaree," consisting of minor humiliations such as being sprayed with water and carried around in wheelbarrows while everyone in attendance yelled and banged on pots and pans.

A quaint custom. Except it was actually the tail end of a tradition called a "charivari" that originated in Europe in the Dark Ages and until the late nineteenth century was a very ugly business, performed not to celebrate a wedding, but to threaten any two lovers who violated the community's notions of what a "natural" union was. (May-December romances, older women and younger men, widows or widowers who remarried too quickly, and so on. Needless to say, lesbian or homosexual couples wouldn't have been subjected to a charivari. They would have been murdered.)

He's a dab hand at that.

He's a darb!

Push down on that foot feed, we're going too slow!

Dimmit, dammit!

Watch out for that bovine aftermath ...

Had a little skiff of snow last night.

Etc etc ...

So many, Thomas, so many, and such a loss. And not just those exclusive to any particular industry. One word that today is substituted for probably a dozen better ones is "weird".

I very rarely hear the old East Midlands term 'Ah-up midduck!' nowadays.

In fact I used it last week in the Lidl store, and got a very strange look in return... oh dear!