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Top 5 Words No One Says Anymore
I recently put together a little piece about the Top 5 Words You CAN’T SAY Anymore which bears a striking difference in content but not in name to this particular gem of literary masturbation. There is a big difference between words you can’t say and words that have simply lost their luster and gone out of style. For instance, I would still love to be able to drop the occasional “what are you some kind of an effing retard?” on someone who has merited the distinction. However, society has chosen to make that term objectionable, no matter how impactful it may have been, leaving me, the bad guy, sounding like an unfeeling asshole. But uttering the now unfashionable 60’s term “groovy,” which I still use extensively, just makes me sound like a dork. Go figure.
This time I want to address specific words that no one seems to use anymore or have simply fallen out of favor. Per usual, there are rules to qualify for mention and inclusion in this list. There will be no pining for the loss of words used by the gigantic losers who roam the medieval fairs such as forsooth, doth, or any regular words where they just added a ”ith” on the end of it.
I struggled at first to come up with five but then they suddenly started to spill out of me to the point of actually having to break the list down into categories. I don’t feel like I have violated the sacred nature of the Top 5 List but if I have offended, I apologize.
Top 5 Words No One Says Anymore
Household words
Personal Items
Food
Body Parts
Miscellaneous
Household items –
Davenport, rubbish, parlor, icebox, rummage sale, milkman
So apparently, a Davenport is another term for a couch. A little research showed that Davenport was actually a company who made couches. Sort of like how we call a tissue a Kleenex, I guess. In any case, it sounds stupid. When you invent another term for an already established word, it should be shorter and easier to say. Couch is a five letter, single syllable word. You simply don’t move from that to a nine letter, polysyllabic term where when you say it, no one has a fucking clue of what you’re talking about. “Hey, will you go grab my coat, I left it on the Davenport?” What? Where the hell is that? What are you talking about?
No one says rubbish anymore. I feel like garbage and rubbish used to run neck and neck in usage volume but somehow rubbish lost its way. I don’t know, maybe rubbish still has some legs in say the south or something but up here in Ohio, it’s dead. Maybe the ease with which the word “bullshit” falls off ones lips helped ruin rubbish. People used to say, “that’s rubbish,” but now they say, “that’s bullshit.”
Does one go to a garage sale or a rummage sale? Rummage to me sounds like rubbish and rummage sales are really an adventure in digging into another person’s garbage so I opt for garage sale. It lets me know ahead of time that I will not be allowed to actually enter their dwelling. Like I’ll happily sell you my trash but please don’t think about going in my home. Estate sales are always held in the house though and usually after someone has died. The kids selling off their parent’s stuff to collect every last penny possible, Garage sales are basically a way to clean out the old shit so there’s room for new shit.
I went to a garage sale probably in the thirty years ago realm. This creepy old lady who lived a few doors down, we called her Madam Piss because she reeked of a loamy human urine smell, was clearing out some obsolete items, items that no one in their right mind would ever want. I remember that she had up for sale an old afghan throw blanket that, if it were possible, smelled even more of human piss than she did. But the thing of most interest was her son, who had to be retarded at least in an emotionally developmental kind of way and whom we referred to as Prince Pee, was selling sculptures he created out of dried up used condoms, ribbed for our pleasure, of course. Now let me be clear here, Prince Pee was not getting laid and, if he was, it certainly was not at the kind of volume that would provide him enough used prophylactics to go into the art business. If you ever get the chance to see a mini-sculpture of Mickey Mouse formed from used condoms, it will be forever burned into your brain. Prince had set up shop in the back corner of the dark garage and once I saw what he was purveying I had visions of the garage door slowly closing. With my next lucid thought coming when I woke up in their basement sucking my thumb with my pants down around my ankles. I quickly exited.
Madam Piss, who was officially named Rose, was a cat lady before we had the term cat lady but I don’t think she had any cats to speak of. I’m pretty sure that being a cat lady is a modern emotional disorder. I feel like we didn’t really care that much about animals fifty years ago to have dozens of them in the house peeing and shitting all over the place. PETA wasn’t around and we didn’t have sappy commercials begging for money to the tunes of Sarah McLachlan. I feel like I will start giving money to starving cats and dogs when all of the people are fed first. Kinda feel like humans are a bit more of a priority at this point in our evolution.
Old people don’t seem to smell like pee as much as they used to. When was the advent of the adult diaper? Before, did old people just change their underwear a lot? I guess old women could sport a maxi-pad, like one of those super pads but what did men do? Isn’t it bad enough that I’m peeing all over myself but now you want me to wear a feminine product? Remind me again why I want to continue to live.
Anyway, back to the word study, there are, of course, other out of date words that are beyond the time frame I’m talking about here like parlor, milkman and icebox. I’m, as always, most concerned with the time frame that is JP Shaver.
Personal items –
Pocketbook, dungarees, slacks, girdle
I could be wrong on this, because I’m not a girl, but I swear the last time I heard the term pocketbook used was at one of my grandmother’s friend’s funerals. It’s a dumb term and it need to be pushed to the wayside. Where is the “wayside” anyway? I have never used the word in any other context outside of, “pushed to the wayside.” It’s a purse. It is neither a pocket nor a book. Was purse always a word that you could use instead of pocketbook? If so, then why did people still opt for the longer, less descriptive word?
Body parts –
Bosom, gams, buttocks
Bosom is a horrible word. My grandmother had bosoms. The word itself is the most sexual deflating of all time. Ladies, if you’re looking to fend off your husbands amorous intentions, just ask him to play with your bosoms, problem solved. No one ever uses the word bosom in porno movies. Not that I watch porn. I’ve just heard that from people who do.
Gams may be a bit out of my time wheelhouse but I really like it. I’d like to hear people start using it again. Nice gams! It has a Humphrey Bogart kind of air to it.
No one says buttocks. Forrest Gump tried to resurrect it when he got shot there but it didn’t stick. It’s too clinical and we have become too desensitized to use such words. Now we just come out and say things like ass or in the case of bosoms, tits.
Food –
Pimento / olive loaf, oleo, supper, Jell-O, Black licorice, the black Chuckle
I think you can still get olive loaf at the deli but I can’t say that I have ever seen someone order it. If they did actually order up some olive loaf, I suspect that they would be over the age of eighty. Those of you with kids, can you imagine their reaction to being served a couple of slices of this stuff?
My grandmother used to call margarine “oleo.” I had to look that one up and found that it is a colloquial term for oils used commonly to make margarine. It’s also a type of shock absorber used in aircraft landing gear.
How many different terms are there for the various meals we eat every day? Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper. What is the difference between supper and dinner? Are they the same thing or am I missing out on another potential meal here? Supper seems to have been phased out though and replaced solely by dinner. While you can sup and dine, I prefer to not think of myself as supping. It sounds gross and is unappetizing.
Does anyone eat Jell-O anymore? I don’t mean as an alcohol delivery system but as an actual side dish to their dinner. We had it almost every night when I was a kid. My mom put fruit and shit in it to dress it up but I always dug it. I think it’s downfall started when we all found out that gelatin is made from things like horse hooves. That doesn’t really bother me that much I’m more interested in how they figured out that Jell-O needed horse hooves in it in the first place. “Something is missing here. It’s just not Jello-O-ey enough for me. You know what we need? Horse hooves!”
Miscellaneous –
Pound sign, Goodies headache powder, Doan’s Pills, mongoloid
Do they still make Doan’s Pills? You couldn’t be on a game show in the seventies and not, at least, come away with a consolation prize of a year-long supply of these mysterious pills that seems to know exactly how to target pain specific to your lower back. How is that possible? Like they were some early version of nanobots created by this mad scientist, Dr. Doan and were available for virtually nothing at your local drug store. Little known fact, Dr. Doan was killed in a freakish car accident back in the early eighties under very suspicious circumstances. That’s not true. I don’t even know if there ever was a Dr. Doan. I just thought it sounded cool to say.
Goodies Headache Power is another one of these freak remedies that can target specific pain. I never saw the stuff sold up here, only in the South, but I do know they sponsor a NASCAR race so maybe they and their magic elixir are still around. I don’t know, I barely leave the house let along go south for headache medicine.
Was mongoloid a term ever used as a derogatory slur? Like clearly dropping an N bomb on someone can only be construed as horrible but I think we’re still allowed to say Mongoloid? Are people from Mongolia known as mongoloids? Oh, wait, no that’s Mongolian.
I blame the people at Twitter for killing the term, pound sign. Why couldn’t they just stick with that? Why hashtag? You have to be a pretty big deal to just go in and rename something. Like I would like to rename the prostate gland to the bifarcal valve but I don’t carry enough weight to pull it off. Maybe if I can get somebody who wields some real power to start telling men over the age of fifty to have their bifarcal valve checked. Wilfred Brimley may be able to pull that off. He already sells diabetes supplies on television so what’s the harm in mentioning at the close of the commercial, “and don’t forget men over fifty, have your doctor, on your next visit, shove their finger up your poop-hole and get that bifarcal valve checked. You wont be sorry.”
JP Shaver Says.... 