Teenagers and old fashioned phrases

[No17CherryTreeLane]

Would the teenagers in your life know what you meant if you asked them
"Are you courting?"

Spent time with extended family over the last week and I asked my 18 year old niece this question.
She looked puzzled and then asked what I meant 😁
Before I answered, we asked her 14 year old sister if she understood the phrase, who said "Yeah of course I know. It means are you going out with anyone!" and looked at her sister in disgust 😂

Any other gems you've come up with, to be met with looks of total bafflement?
(I'm mid 50s by the way, which practically translates to being older than Methuselah!)

I still say for Pete’s sake. I wondered who Pete was as a child. Never said courting, except singing “Froggie went courting”, and nor did my parents. It’s a pre-war generation expression!

Field glasses. I remember having to look that up when reading the Famous Five; I've never seen the phrase anywhere else.

The young people I know would most likely know "courting" from Bridgerton!

The use of the word ‘tight’ meaning mean or reluctant to spend money. Caused a few dropped jaws with my 20yr old nephew when DH referred to his brother’s new partner as tight. 😂

We used to “chuck” people we no longer wanted to go out with. Only Americans “dated”.

"On no account" feels quite old-fashioned.

Here's one to mess with their minds: toilet. Not with the usual meaning, but as in "completing one's toilet", i.e. washing and dressing, which of course gives us "toiletries" and "toilet bag".

My family used all sorts of funny phrases just amongst themselves so I was quite old before I realised that not everyone said "Gordon's calling" when someone's tummy rumbled. Apparently Gordon was a family friend who used to call and enjoy a good moan on the phone!

I can remember being asked if I was courting as a young teen by an elderly relative. I think I turned inside out with embarrassment 😆. I'll have to ask my teens if they know what it means when they surface.

I got laughed off the thread once for referring to “bedclothes”.

Same.
I heard it again when watching a programme about a religious fundamentalist family in Tennessee with 19 kids, "Bringing up Bates." They have a courting period with chaperones which usually leads to marriage. (Unless the couple decides they aren't suited.)

This though should be ‘toilette’, as in ‘eau de toilette’

Yes we did! Go out, get off, chuck. Simple.

I have seen it spelt simply "toilet", in books. Adrian Mole refers to "his toilet habits", while calling the toilet a lavatory. I bet "toilette" came later, to avoid confusion; and as for "eau de toilette", the whole phrase is French, hence the double t ending.

This phrase used to make me laugh, from the book The Marvellous Land of Oz, when the Tin Woodman has just been polished, and then has a passionate embrace with the Scarecrow, smearing him in putz-pomade:
But alas! The Tin Woodman had forgotten the state of his toilet.

I bet "alas" would confuse some teenagers, if Boris Johnson hadn't abused it.

sliceoflife · Today 09:27
The use of the word ‘tight’ meaning mean or reluctant to spend money. Caused a few dropped jaws with my 20yr old nephew when DH referred to his brother’s new partner as tight

What did your nephew think it means? I thought it meant mean with money and it used to be used to mean drunk.

I got laughed off the thread once for referring to “bedclothes

This thread is making me feel very old. What’s wrong with bedclothes?

Speaking of toilet habits, my grandad used to perform his ablutions every morning:)

Asking if someone is courting is a very old fashioned phrase for a 50 something, never mind a teenager. I thought aunts asking their nieces and nephews such hideously embarrassing questions like have you got a boyfriend/girlfriend yet went out decades ago. My aunt used to ask the same thing, but had she not passed away she'd literally be hundred now (born 1926!).

@38thparallel That’s reminded me when I told my son about being sent to Coventry by your friends at school. He’d never heard the phrase and was horrified that your friends would randomly decide that tomorrow at school no one was going to talk to you (for absolutely no reason). I said everyone eventually got their turn to be sent to Coventry 😂 He thought we were all mad and, in hindsight, it really was pretty toxic.

I think doing a line means something completely different now, even in Ireland.

That’s reminded me when I told my son about being sent to Coventry by your friends at school.

Would today’s phrase be ‘ghosted’?
There’s also ‘boycott’ from Captain Boycott but I think that phrase is still in circulation.

I went to school in the 80s but I remember our maths teacher telling us we'd have a supply teacher for the next lesson because he "had to see a man about a dog". Cue twenty questions of us asking what dog he was getting, did he have a name, was it from the dogs home or a breeder etc.

Went home and told my mum and dad that I had until the following week to do my homework because "Mr Wilde was off getting a dog". When I repeated what he actually said they literally wet their pants laughing.

I'm 51 and "courting" was old fashioned in my youth. Grandparents might say it but my parents definitely said "going out with ..."

I did say "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" to my 21 year old son the other day and he had no idea what it meant. My daughter also mocks me for saying "sanitary towels" - apparently you are only allowed to call them "pads" these days.

To no avail.

I learned that from a Ladybird book. "The men put their heads down the rabbit hole, and shouted after Tom Thumb, but all to no avail."

Lots of the old euphemisms for sex would confuse teenagers now:

Intercourse.
How's your father.
A bird "slips up" with a bloke one night. She finds out when she has the nipper, nine months on.
A bit of crumpet on the side.

Measure twice and cut once....saves time and materials. Said that to my 20 year old and it made him think

One fairly common phrase I remember from my 1950's childhood was “he's getting a good screw” - meaning he's got a job that pays high wages.

Today's teens are likely to interpret that rather differently.

Thank you for that, 'placket fastener' made me laugh out loud. Such a Victoria Wood type phrase