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!)

My mother would have often used the same phrase. South of Ireland in her case.

THANK YOU, you have just given me an instant flashback to this! I think maybe from the public toilets at Scarborough when I was little.

What a brilliant thread.

Just rewatching ER and was surprised to hear pop used a few times. I always associate it with my grandad, who’d have been 130 by now!

I never really understood what necking was. Snogging? Or love bites? Sounds vampiric.

We’re south-west. Dubs are practically foreigners!

I doubt anyone’s shifted anyone in a disco since the nineties, have they? Since the days of rural discos where the played the national anthem at the night and everyone sort of drunkenly unglued themselves from whoever they’d been all over…

Not sure what ‘shifting’ is.

I thought Pop was fairly standard as well.

Another regional term is what people use fur crossing their fingers. I grew up in one county and it was called ‘ Squib’ or ‘’Squibsies’ (sp?). Then moved to another part of the country and it was called ‘Patsies’ Also heard it called ‘Cross - Keys’. Do youngsters still cross their fingers?

Pop is very common in North America. There was a chain called The Poppe Shoppe that sold over 40 different flavours of pop.

I thought pop was only a North American term. You learn something new every day.

Necking is enthusiastic snogging

I would have thought your mothers usage of it would be more regional, because 'doing a line with' when discussing cocaine isn't slang and would be a description of what's going on. Apologies if that's what you meant 😂

I love the idea of octogenarians telling people who they were doing a line with and people being confused and thinking they were sesh heads 😂

Why. ?
Just sounded factual to me.
We used to put the penny in the top of the brass box on the door.
Family or friends would take it in turns holding the door open when they Exited so the next person could use the cubicle without paying.

Shifting was an Irish word for kissing. Still used but in a more joking way.

A common phrase at discos would be 'will you shift my mate?' 😂

‘Charlie’s dead’ to mean that your slip/petticoat is showing at the bottom of the hem of your skirt.

Likewise, ‘it’s snowing down south’

I thought it included enthusiastic kissing and lovebites , on the neck, hence ‘necking’.

NE Scotland- If your petticoat was showing you were "Looking for a husband"

If you crossed your fingers you said "Parlies", whatever that meant.

If one cake was left on a plate you said something about a handsome husband 😆

Me too, I've never heard that used for anything except the sexual meaning, it was used for that in the 80s when Inwas a teen. Loved a bit of Finbar

I haven't heard anyone use pop for fizzy drink since the 80s either.

Ditto.

Also Where the pictures are shown
In the picturehouse.
? possibly has made a comeback in retro style arty farty circles.

Shifting and doing a strong line, I've just been catapulted back to Mayo in the 1990s! Thanks 👍

My mum thought the same thing about getting or giving 'made in Hong Kong' presents. Although, she never minded when I bought her Hong Kong rubbish for Christmas from Woolworths. I was just a little nipper then.

Courting wasn’t used when I was a teen either! Though I knew what it meant from novels. It’s very old.

I use the word pop as in can of pop (though I may just say the brand of choice as I’m fussy!) I thought most people of my generation do as we grew up on panda pop at school (yes kids sugar laden fizzy drinks in the school canteen with burgers and chips every day )

My grandpa would be 134 now, he and my nana called it pop. They had it delivered by the Corona man. The pop man. My grandparents were Welsh. They'd give me a taste of the pop - what a luxury. My mum would never buy it. The only fizzy drink she bought was Lucozade when we were ill.

My grandpa also used to call peanuts 'monkey nuts'. He'd give me some money and ask me to get some from the shops for him. The greengrocer sold them.

@GeorginaWilby We only had fizzy drinks at Christmas and for birthdays. It was a special treat.

‘She’s got double gusset knickers’ for being uptight

No fizzy drinks at my schools either 70s/80s, just big metal jugs of water on the tables that tasted horrible or water fountains. There was a pop delivery service locally but we didn't use it. A friend had a sodastream which was quite the thing but the drinks were really not very nice. I remember first tasting proper Coke at a school disco in my last year of primary school.

I do remember Made in Hong Kong being used for low quality things