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.

A couple of months ago I absentmindedly said that dh and I were going to the pictures...all 3 dc (17, 15, 8) were like 'the...what? Pictures? What?!' 😂 They were utterly bemused and I had to explain 😂

I'm 'only' 39 so not sure if it's just an age thing or more regional? But it was always called the pictures when I was growing up. Dh is from an entirely different area and over the years i've picked up his wording and now say cinema, as do dc, hence they'd never heard me say it!

Oh yes going to the baths was going swimming where I come from. baths is the pool although yes Id not thought that originally it referred to being able to have a bath. But yes that’s obvious now you’ve said it.

I still say going to the pictures rather than cinema.

Say the flicks next time, that will confuse them!

My sisters sister in law ( born in 1988 ) had never heard of
John Lennon, said it’s because he had died before she was born , this was about 15 years ago but we still tease her about it to this day .

trunks, as in swimming or packing cases
Costume, this was a 40s term for a lady's suit
types of fur coats: coney, mink, beaver

I just read a book published in 2025 and people were wearing velvet.

This is the other thread.
To be shocked that not even one y4 child knew the meaning of the word velvet? | Mumsnet

Trunks (meaning cases) are mentioned in Harry Potter.

Coney is mentioned in Five on a Hike Together as a country word for rabbit.

And mink, it's mentioned in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as the coat Veruca Salt wears, but I thought mink was a colour. (In the Gene Wilder film, legend has it that the young actress who played Veruca got into real trouble for leaving the mink coat lying around; it was made-to-measure for her, and in 1970, it might even have been real mink!)

@LilyCanna Speaking of Chalet school slang, the girls are frequently told off and made to pay fines for using slang, and it can be surprising to a modern reader what was considered "slang" in those days: smashing, OK, and I'm sure they say "topping" (meaning "great!").

I have a lovely Indian friend who at times uses words like pantry and splendid like a PG Wodehouse character .Mostly she doesn't!

I use both those words in normal life!

Pantries are coming back! I know a few people with new builds who have pantries.

Duffel coat.

I had one as a child - I never liked it much.

I thInk @eggandonion is in Ireland.
Splendid isn’t a word that’s used much here. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used, other than on tv or radio and in books.

I’ll be quizzing my teens about the words OP mentioned 😁 I had no trouble with any of them, though owe my knowledge of Splashery and that sense of crocodile to reading the Chalet School books. I suspect my kids will falter over some of them. My 14 year DS didn’t know velvet beyond Red Velvet cake, though his brother did know it was a fabric. Interesting thread.

The older private schools each have their own terms/slang for all manner of things, unique to the school - I suppose it's a good way of catching out somebody who's lying about having attended a particular prestigious school? The school I used to work for called the toilet/shower/wash rooms 'toshes'.

On whether children know the words or not - DS definitely knows 'splendid' because it's in O Christmas Tree, or at least the translation his nursery sang this year.

@SkankingWombat Perhaps "Splashery" is unique to the Chalet School. Roald Dahl said that prefects at his school were called "Boazers". Of course, Hogwarts has introduced lots of vocabulary about boarding schools to children, such as common rooms, school houses.

And here's a word I love teaching my maths pupils: "gross". None of them have heard it used as a quantity, as in "how many gross shall we deliver"?

The children who don't know what velvet means have obviously never read "That's Not My Monkey" (it's tail is too velvety)

A bit off topic, but my own memory of some boarding school terminology just popped into my head! Early 1960s, and Mum worked in the school kitchens. We had a room provided with the job, and I attended the day school, but had breakfast and supper with the boarders. The younger among us (me and the 7/8/9 year olds, were always called loudly to the dining hall for “Early Bed Supper!” Not particularly hard to understand, just very evocative, even at such a distance!

talking of fabrics I should imagine these days they are usually lumped into natural and man made but what about the fabric names we had to learn at school in needlework?
crimplene
rayon
brocade
gingham
tweed

I'm not saying the words are obsolete, but they're old-fashioned.

A couple are but honestly, most of what you have listed are commonly used where I live - in Ireland, which surprises me more, as you are suggesting they are the preserve, mainly, of old-fashioned English children's literature.

Only one of my DC read these avidly as I did, my two DSs are not readers (sadly, although they will occasionally get engrossed in a book - they are both teens and sporty and not keen on reading, to my dismay). But most of the words are fairly commonly used - like your example above, duffel coat. Both my boys (16 and 14 now) had one, and they know it from Paddington anyhow!

I'm not doubting you, by the way, or the other posters who aren't familiar with the words, I'm just surprised. Like, larder and pantry are pretty common here. I don't have either - my house is not large! But several family members do, and use those words.

Not that I can think of them now but there certainly are phrases I use, mostly, like you from my childhood and other reading, that are definitely not in vogue and my kids wouldn't know them. They are pretty good on vocab mostly, probably from listening to me and also I have the radio on constantly.

I agree these words are all old fashioned or else very class specific. Nothing like velvet (there are 1749 items currently listed as velvet on the John Lewis website and 465 listed on the Matalan website). Velvet is still very much in use.

Which ones do you think are class specific @mcmuffin22?

My dc loved reading old books and occasionally asked what things were, but normally worked it out (yes, even "Splashery" from the Chalet School).
I'm fairly certain that the Chalet School does refer to that as being a school specific word. It's fairly obvious if you read it in context.

The did (and even sometimes) do use old fashioned phrasing - ds was the funniest when he got into Biggles and we had a lot of "damn shame" and "chocks away" and that sort of language.
They all tend to use "gosh!" and dd2 went through a stage of calling me "mama".

I remember asking dm what a "Liberty bodice" was when I was small and being very disappointed to hear it was basically a type of vest. It sounded very exciting in the books.🤣

My friend had a liberty bodice about 1968. My mother thought that was very old fashioned.

My Mum's friend had one in the early 1950s and she said it was old fashioned then! Apparently she hated it.

3yo DS knows what a mangle is. There’s one in Mother Hubbard’s cellar in Each Peach Pear Plum. Also a coal scuttle.