Words you've only heard your parents use for things

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

My Mum calls the cupboard under the stairs the 'spence' and I've never heard anyone else call it that or use that word.

That’s reminded that my mum used the word slut for being messy ( she was born 1928 )

Think it’s equivalent of “slob”

MiL apparently used to say ‘What a smeech!’ in reference to smokey bonfires and the like. We use it in her memory.

My family always pronounced broccoli ‘brock-oh-lye’ as well! I didn’t realise it was wrong until I got laughed at at university 😂

Our parents both said ‘humping’ for moving heavy things so me and DH always ask if the other wants a hand with humping.

For ‘having a poo’ my mother would say ‘having a tension’. Other kids laughed at me when I said it.

She also used glory hole etc.

Going down the street' - going shopping

We used to say this in the 70s. But as the local.shops actually were "down the street" I just took it as a literal saying...

My dad used to call the man over the road a chump. I know it IS a word, I've just never actually heard anybody use it...

Can anyone please confirm whether "fair does/dooz/dues" (no idea how you would spell it but it rhymes with lose and booze) is a real phrase or one my dad made up? He is always saying it, in the context of giving credit credit to someone or giving them their due. So he'll say something like "he sticks with the job even though he hates it, fair dooz". It feels as if it is an odd pronunciation of fair dues, which would sort of make sense given the context it is used in.

My parents also referred to the screaming abdabs.

We had ujimmywotsits, as well. (normally the corkscrew, could have been the can opener...)
We all say fair do's... Think that's regional.

However I have yet to come across another family who call the remote control a "Flicker Flicker"

Thank you @Lima45! I have never heard anyone else say it and thought he made it up. He says it so often that I have come to find it quite irritating.

Both my parents used to say screaming abdabs to describe my brother and me if we were making a lot of noise.

@Memorialbeach

Only difference is we were told we had/we're having the screaming abdabs when we were noisy. They made it sound like a disease 😂

Unfortunately my parents also said things which we didn’t understand were racist as children but obviously do now eg
Grubby little children having fun playing outside including me and my sister, were affectionately referred to as “dirty little arabs” I cringe now just thinking about it

No one else call earwigs “battle twigs”? My grandmother’s term, very descriptive.
it was always black over Annie’s mothers in our house (midlands). Alleyways were jittys.Buggerluggs, oojamaflips, both in regular use.
My other gran’s most potent term of disapproval was “hope your rabbits die”!

@dontticklethetoad Hands up for Jesus in our home growing up. Never heard that anywhere else.

SamBeckett are you from the Midlands?
My parents used all those words, I haven't heard Bugalugs in years, Dad used to call me it

Oh Lord my parents had all kinds of cultural references from old radio shows, which were probably very topical in their youth but by the 1980s were not.

"Who's that? Charlie Farnsbarns?" which I think was from the 40s radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh. Charlie Farnsbarns being a placeholder name when you didn't know when someone was.

"What did Horace say, ..." when they couldn't understand someone, which Wikipedia tells me was from the Ovaltiney's Concert Party which ran on Radio Luxembourg between 1934 1939.

Used to refer to me as 'Snowy' as a reference to the sidekick from 'Dick Barton Special agent (Radio programme 1946-51)

And various comments in Polari by Julian and Sandy, from round the Horne (1965-8) which I'm not 100% sure they fully understood and which I as a child certainly didn't.

Gosh, I know I'm an old gimmer but an awful lot of these words and expressions seem familiar to me

Yes to fair do's, screaming abdabs (I remember an excellent band on the cabaret circuit in the 80s called the Screaming Abdabs, as it happens), mardy, mither. 'Have a cob on' is very Liverpudlian too.

Interesting about 'pokey-hats' for ice-cream cones....'hokey-pokey' was the Victorian term for ice-cream so possibly a relic of that?

My Dad always said Frock for dress
Cruet for Salt and Pepper set

But those are common words, have you really never heard of the word frock?

'Street arabs' was Victorian slang for homeless kids 'urchins' dressed in rags.
www.quora.com/Why-does-Arthur-Conan-Doyle-refer-to-the-network-of-urban-poor-that-Sherlock-Holmes-employs-to-gather-information-as-street-Arabs-What-is-the-origin-of-that-term

@LatteLove my mum thought twat was the same as twit too. She's a teaching assistant and was mortified to have called a few students "silly twats."

I really apologize if this is racist

My mum calls things 'Irish'. I don't really understand though.

If something is odd. Like a tap that turns the wrong way. "The taps Irish"

🤷🤷Never heard anyone else say this

@Knittingnanny I was interested to learn that they used to use the term "street arabs" for homeless children in Victorian times, so your relatives may have just been calling you urchins? It was a term used a lot in Sherlock Holmes books.

street arab
Also found in: Thesaurus, Wikipedia.
Related to street arab: street urchin
street Arab
n
(Literary & Literary Critical Terms) literary old-fashioned a homeless child, esp one who survives by begging and stealing; urchin
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Just seen that @scarecrowhead beat me to it.

Ah that makes sense, definitely referring to us as urchins when they said Arabs. That’s made me feel a bit better! They also pronounced it ay-rab

threehoursfromhome

'What did Horace say, Winnie?' was the catchphrase of Harry Hemsley, who specialised in telling stories about a group of small children. He impersonated their voices (creepily very convincingly) and Horace was the baby who could only talk in a childish babble. Winnie, his older sister, was always being asked to translate what he'd said into English, hence the catchphrase.

I know this because my DM used to use that expression too!

There's an article about Harry Hemsley here

Wireless
Jersey
Frock

I think you get more of these the more families move. So my DGF was born in Lancashire, joined the army, DF was born in London around and I was born in Cambridge.

DF used words that nobody I knew used but I suspect are Lancastrian or army in origin?!

• mush (used as one would use ‘mate’ when talking to someone
• lurgy (unspecified illness)
• mufti (I know it’s army now, meaning own clothes)
• hettie-hottie (hot water bottle)

And some which have just gone out of fashion like chum (‘which chums do you want to invite?’).