What Words Do You Use that "Date" You?

I called the refrigerator an ice box for many years.

@sozobe,

Quote:

I seem to use "awesome" a lot, which gives off a whiff of 80's.

Soz- Shows to go you. I thought that "awesome" was contemporary!

mini-skirts
French knots
schmoos
high heeled sneakers
"politically correct"- a phrase which has had much too much longevity as it is.
stenographers, also typists and typewriters.
milk boxes, also milkman

1 Reply

@Phoenix32890,

Speaking of typewriters....in 1988, in a computer industry office setting, we were 'instructed' that the term secretary was no longer acceptable. They were now administrative assistants.

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@Ragman,

Quote:

They were now administrative assistants

( See "politically correct" )

1 Reply

@Ragman,

Ragman wrote:

Speaking of typewriters....in 1988, in a computer industry office setting, we were 'instructed' that the term secretary was no longer acceptable. They were now administrative assistants.

Secretary used to be a prestigious position, occupied by a trusted male employee
of hi competence in personal management, not just a stenografer.
A secretary worked for a man of means.
Ergo, George Washington 's Cabinet secretaries of State, the Treasury, War, etc.
Secretaries had stenografers at their disposal.

David

1 Reply

"Jumping Jehoshaphat"
"Dagnabit"
"Boy Howdy"
Only after eating at a Roy Rogers Restaurant.
Joe(I'm a'gunna cowboy up this game.)Nation

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@Phoenix32890,

I'm not sure exactly what words I use that date me, but future generations will LIKE look back at LIKE the 'noughties' and LIKE just know that LIKE it was the era of LIKE, like.

My niece who was 18 last June, like talks like this all the time and it like drives me nuts!, my nephew however who was just 14 doesn't use it anywhere near the same amount, so is this just a girl thing? or is everything so fleeting nowadays that even a craze only lasts for a very short time?

Am just off to contemplate my speech patterns-

SMS

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@Phoenix32890,

And to amplify a little about the secretary position as of 1996): my ex-gf was a an old school legal secretary and used that term to describe her job. She could type 90 wpm, ran the small office basically as an office manger, and made sure that the 4 lawyer's schedules were always current and their hours accounted for. She was an essential cog in that firm's success. So the term secretary was a term not needing laundering by pc police.

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@OmSigDAVID,

There were different 'levels' of secretary. There were secretaries who sat in secretary pools (see TV show Madmen). However, there were Executive Secretaries - who were the right-hand assistant to an important executive.

At one time there were male secretaries, but, then again, there were a lot of positions that were once male only (as an example, take the position of chef).

1 Reply

@sms,

sms wrote:

I'm not sure exactly what words I use that date me, but future generations will LIKE look back at LIKE the 'noughties' and LIKE just know that LIKE it was the era of LIKE, like.

My niece who was 18 last June, like talks like this all the time and it like drives me nuts!, my nephew however who was just 14 doesn't use it anywhere near the same amount, so is this just a girl thing? or is everything so fleeting nowadays that even a craze only lasts for a very short time?

Am just off to contemplate my speech patterns-

SMS

The Beatniks (the Beat Generation)
of the 1950s adopted that mannerism.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Like crazy, man. I dig that!

1 Reply

@Ragman,

Ragman wrote:

There were different 'levels' of secretary. There were secretaries who sat in secretary pools (see TV show Madmen). However, there were Executive Secretaries - who were the right-hand assistant to an important executive.

At one time there were male secretaries, but, then again, there were a lot of positions that were once male only (as an example, take the position of chef).

In earlier centuries, a secretary
was like a personal estate manager; no pools for him.

As time passed, the job was reduced in its importance,
women were entrusted with it, under supervision
and there were many of them in pools.

David

1 Reply

@Ragman,

Ragman wrote:

Like crazy, man. I dig that!

Yeah, right; the Beatniks considered themselves to be artists.
I was never clear qua how thay got beaten,
nor by whom. We were fresh from huge victories
in Europe and the Pacific; I dunno.
I never asked; never cared.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

FWIW, I had to look up the actual definition of beatnik. A word that Kerouac had much to do with; however, he actually intended the definition as poetic ...beatific. He did NOT intend the definition that was co-opted by media, who turned it into down-trodden or beaten down.

"The word "beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958. Caen coined the term by adding the Russian suffix -nik after Sputnik I to the Beat Generation. Caen's column with the word came six months after the launch of Sputnik. Objecting to Caen's twist on the term, Allen Ginsberg wrote to the New York Times to deplore "the foul word beatnik," commenting, "If beatniks and not illuminated Beat poets overrun this country, they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash man."

1 Reply

@Ragman,

That 's interesting. Thank u.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

Groovy, baby! Going with my main squeeze to a hootenanny or was it rent party shindig down the street. My mind has wigged out!

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@sms,

You're English, right? I think the "like" crutch took a while to make its way from America to England. It was a standard of 80's Valley Girl speech. ("Like, gag me with a spoon, like I can't wear such a like totally grody dress, like, as if.")

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@Ragman,

I don't think of a davenport as the same as divan but some might -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divan_(furniture)

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@edgarblythe,

I think I called it an ice box too (hard to remember). The first one of those things I owned myself, that I traded a pastel of a horse for, didn't keep ice very well, as it happened. By then I probably called it a refrigerator.

0 Replies

copacetic
I don't use it often, but every once in a while . . .

2 Replies

What Words Do You Use that "Date" You?

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