Would your children know these words?

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Following the thread about children not knowing the word "velvet", and they should know what it means from reading books, let's have some fun with words that used to appear in books a lot, but are less often seen now. Would your own children know them? Some of these, I remember looking up when I came across them. Give your own examples too!

Perambulator
The baths (as in "I'm going to the baths").
Field glasses (The Famous Five)
Bosom (Roald Dahl is fond of it)
Splashery (The only place I've seen this is in the Chalet School books)
Crocodile (not the animal; what children do on school trips)
A PT lesson.

Gosh I don’t even know all of those words! My daughter is 16 and I don’t think wouldn’t know any (to be fair she is not British, although English is our first language). They are all pretty outdated terms and I don’t think come into the same category as “velvet” which is still widely used. Bosom is possibly still used a bit, and field glasses is easy enough to guess.

What does PT lesson mean? I just googled and got personal training lesson which is what I would have thought, but I don’t think that’s what is meant here?

@TappyGilmore PT means "physical training", what we now call PE, or "physical education". One of my middle-aged primary school teachers still said PT, in the 1980s, and several girls at the Chalet School wanted to be PT teachers.

Try these:
Larder.
Dresser.
Parlour.
Cruet.
I've met lots of teenagers who know nothing about playing cards, such as what a "suit" is. I've had to explain cards to them when teaching them probability.

I remember not knowing fireside vocabulary:
Scuttle.
Fender.
Hearth.
Toasting fork.
One word I did know was "poker", because I remember a reading comprehension from primary where a housewife saw a hand smash through the glass on her front door to reach the handle, and she struck the hand with a red-hot poker which she was carrying. (Oh the times before burglars had rights!)

My 11 year old would know all of them apart from the Splashery. She’s a big reader, autistic and speaks like an older-days-person but hasn’t read the Chalet School!

9-year-old would know field glasses and crocodile only

Your writing might be blotchy, if you don’t use your blotter! A blotter, or blotting paper, is still used by those writing with fountain pens, I would have thought?

Exactly, especially as ‘pram’ is a contraction of ‘perambulator’!

Oddly me and DH had jokingly referred to a mangle last week then had to explain it to our 12&14yos. They knew mangle as in "mix up" but not the equipment.
(We also tried to explain an Overhead Projector to them (as in old classroom equipment) but they thought we were crazy)

Op, are you from the 1940's?

My 10yo wouldn’t.

That's how we learned the words, by reading and having them explained to us.

They're no different in that respect, even if they're needing us to explain what a VCR, compact disc or dial tone is now.

But the whole point is that if you read books from earlier generations, you learn new words! Either by asking someone, or looking them up (which is easier since the invention of the internet!). I remember first reading "Emma" at about 13, and having to ask what 'valetudinerian' meant re Mr Woodhouse..... but I've never forgotten it since.
I also learnt many German words from the Chalet School books!

And my first encounter with Shakespeare was when the Fossil sisters were rehearsing 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'in "Ballet Shoes".... I loved that book, even though there was so much in it that was outside my experience or understanding.

Please, please keep giving your children books that stretch them.... it will improve their lives no end.

All of those things are extremely English, so no.

I think I use all of these now.... they're not outdated. Definitely played blind man's buff at school, and surely everyone knows what a lavatory is?

My DS is 4 and he loves having the My Naughty Little Sister stories read to him.

I think you have to remember that as well as working out the meanings from the context, little children come across all sorts of words and concepts that are new to them in books, and they would have no concept of the specific ones listed on this thread as being more obscure or unusual than many other words that are still completely current but that they are encountering for the first time. There will also be lots of made up words, magical creatures etc in children's books so it would feel pretty normal to not recognise everything.

DS does now sometimes ask what individual words mean, most recently 'duchess' and 'chocolate eclair'.

I’m a bit surprised. My DC - well, 2 of them at least - are not readers, and they’d know, and use, quite a few of these. And we’re Irish, not English.

Surely lots of these are in common use eg larder, cruet, parlour, aga (lots of people have agas, not us, but many we know), blind man’s buff was played at parties …

You are acting like these are obsolete terms only used in older children’s literature but that’s not the case?

I know all those words apart from splashery but as my offspring are children of the 21st century the only ones I know for sure they would know are

Ford - who doesn't watch videos of cars driving through them? 😁
Poaching/aga/lavatory - all pretty mainstream imo

Our 5 year old grandchild would know field glasses but none of the others.

My middle child loved Enid Blyton,Anne of Green Gables, What Katy Did etc as well as modern fiction of the early 2000s... so had a wide vocabulary of outdated nouns. My other two weren't as widely read.
All 3 have professional careers and masters degrees and can find out meanings of words...but middle one knows that Collins dictionary is excellent.

My DCs would have a stab at field glasses and PT lesson (though they'd associate it with military school) and bosom. The rest are very specifically British terms, and they were brought up in the US. They would definitely know 'velvet'.

I'd consider some of them 'outmoded' - splashery, the baths, perambulator.

We have a friend who was headmaster in a prep school which had scripture lessons. Our kids were weirdly fascinated by the school prospectus with its unusual words (and eye-watering fees).

My DCs would know all except Aga, and possibly lavatory.

The DCs would know all of these. Many are commonly used in the US.

We have an open fire so all the tools on a companion set plus a coal scuttle. No fender...though we had a nursery fireguard.
As a child our local swimming pool had baths attached...it was an area where a bathroom was considered posh. I really wanted to have a bath in the big bathroom. A towel and soap was provided. Dh still calls public swimming pools the baths.

Im nearly 40 and don't know any of these words

You use a big vocab, your children will too. They can’t be expected to automatically know, you tell them, as and when they hear it.

I can’t believe children don’t know lavatory??? That’s the standard word, surely, over toilet?

Our older primary-aged children would know most of those words because we read an awful lot of classic children's books. The language is wonderful in them, not twaddle like so many (not all!) modern children's books. It really does enrich their vocabulary.