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!)

Swinging the lead.

More tea, Vicar?

When I was young, older people would ask "Have you got a lad or a dame" for going out with someone.

I still use those terms with friends of my age.

When I was going out as a teenager, my nana always used to say Keep your hand on your ha'apenny.
She meant don't lower your defences and get up to anything naughty.
Nobody younger than me (64) would know what a ha'apenny was a euphemism for, I don't think!

"I am very vexed with you".

My [Irish] granny's favourite. I use it on the kids occasionally and I might as well be speaking fluent Shakespeare. Pretty sure it appears in Shakespearean plays to be fair.

I always thought that was more literal...a way to protect yourself and get some pleasure without letting a man near. Back in the days when you couldn't actually ask. We all had to figure these out so most are quite literal.

My nana was fond of telling us that she always carried a hatpin and wasn't afraid to use it if a young man got fresh! She definitely meant keep them at bay and nothing else. Or as she said, They'll be trying to mess with your clothes as soon as look at you!

Was that if someone burped? That's how we always used it.

My family always said that (South Lancs.)

Because my mother is 95 and has exactly the same mindset as you described.
Just for context of the years your mother grew up in. 8
She has some very strong views which we of course we accept
as her right.
Modern views don't touch my mother's opinions.

My mother would have been 96. My sister got married at 28 which was considered old in the early 80s.
She was petrified that if she didn't hurry up and get married people would think she was a lesbian 🙄

Mine is a mere child of 80!

I have limited patience with the mindset because, while she may have been born in 1946, she's alive in 2026, and through a lot ofsocial changes happening all round her and within her own family. She's been meeting my gay friends of both sexes since my student days, she voted in a referendum about gay marriage, she is the mother of a gay married man and of two daughters who are unmarried and childfree by choice, both having had a series of relationships they never intended to be a 'line' that terminated in marriage. I sometimes think she thinks her own children are imaginary.

It’s ’are you going with someone’.
My DDs 18 and 21, both know what this means. People here still say it, older people anyway. My aunt asked me recently if my dd was courting. I think it’s still alive in Wales.

This has a completely different meaning for my generation, but my mother always used to ask whether someone wanted to be “knocked up in the morning”, meaning woken up.

I used to always get "Are you courting yet". It made me feel positively on the shelf at the ripe old age of 13/14.

I like to amuse myself by telling my daughter off when she borrows my rouge.
Last time I heard it used was an elderly neighbour telling me she thought our other elderly neighbour had given up as she went round for a cuppa and " she didn't have her rouge on"

I'm 47 and I appear to be allergic to the word 'cinema' - I say 'going to the pictures' - I think because I have a romantic soul and it sounds lovelier and I am approaching my half century so I will inevitably use vocabulary that has already been outpaced by people a quarter of my age!

I still say pictures and also wireless instead of radio 😅

Oh yes. I say we're going to watch a film, but I make sure I pronounce it "fillum" as my grandparents did.

I also talk about "taping things" as in recording something on TV.

oh I dunno. I’ve talked to my kids all their lives. They know my phrases. They know their nan’s phrases. They enjoy them. They use them too.

@ContentedAlpaca the proper phrase is “going to the pictures”. 😘

I still say pictures and also wireless instead of radio 😅

Dh says when he puts on the tv, “I’ll warm up the set” as in the olden days that’s what happened.

My best mate says fillum too - she's from Ballymun. When we have a bit too much to drink one of the funniest things we do is say fillum names in our strongest accents (I'm from the Valleys, so I have a mad accent when I choose to) but she always wins with the Smurf Movie. By which I mean the Smorff Fillum!

Correct! I can verify this!

My mum was telling me how she always found it really embarrassing when my nan would ask her ‘are you courting?’ when she was a teenager in the 1970s/80s because it sounded so old-fashioned and her friends thought it was funny 😂

I’ve always called generic fizzy drinks “pop”, as in “Go to the corner shop for a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop”. Pretty normal word, or so I thought.

18yo DD used it on a university summer course and they accused her of talking posh!
So what is it now? A mineral? A soda? A (brand name like Pepsi)?

Yes my DS asked me this recently, and i was bemused he thought i wouldnt know.

My DH (early 60s) sometimes uses the expression "courting" and me and teens think its hilarious and old fashioned. I dont even remember people using it when I was their age (im 48)

Often my teens use the expression getting cooked , but DS said he and his mate say "mildly flambéd"(??) which i didn't think he'd have any idea of the proper meaning. Ive never flambé anything, and neither has he!