Words you can't use any more

[CoalTit]

I know language evolves and all that. I accepted that "nonplussed" is now an unusable word because so many people take it to mean its opposite. I didn't really have much occasion to use it anyway. But now it turns out that "lame" and "literally' have suffered the same fate.

I've hurt my foot. I tried to explain to a friend on WhatsApp that I won't be going dancing this week, by writing: "I'm literally, technically lame". I got a long voice message in return expressing sympathy for my lack of confidence, saying how intimidating the dance scene can be.
So I tried, "No, lame, like a horse" and that seemed to work.
Then I messaged my upstairs neighbour to say I can't help her with her work in the light well today because I'm lame. I hurt my foot helping her so I thought she'd understand.
She replied asking me to get up the ladder so she can pass things down to me. I tried " I can't help you today; I can barely walk", and she seemed to understand.

I thought I could use "lame" to save myself typing out "I hurt my foot; it's badly swollen and I can barely walk". I thought I could use "literally" to make it clear, but no.

And ducks.

I still think they’ve misunderstood ‘not fussed’.

Or unphased

Muphry’s Law in action!

Does this help?

Nowhere near that old. For people who read the classics - even books written up to about 80 years ago, gay was indeed just used to mean happy. Obviously, most people know that its primary understanding has very much changed now; but those making this comment aren't just trying to be clever.

Yes, I thought that sounded a bit unfortunate as well - especially as 'fay' has been used in the past to refer to homosexual men.

I wonder if her name was actually just Gay, or was it short for Gaynor or Gabrielle? If so, she'd have been better to go with Nora or Elle/Ellie for her 'known as' name.

I am completely nonplussed reading what you wrote there, @cloudsandclouds. I have never heard of nonplussed in the context of being unbothered. It means perplexed, not "not fussed". But I am old and English and you are doubtless young and American (cue David Bowie).

Even more so than 'gay', there was a word that was commonly used in decades gone by, which you categorically cannot use nowadays. They used to use it in the comics that I read in the 1980s, but which at that point were still firmly stuck in the 1940s in their style, which I found really charming.

Portable radios were widely known as 'transistor radios', which, at 6 syllables, is inconveniently long... so a lot of people would abbreviate the first word to a 2-syllable alternative, that rhymes with the name Danny...

Photographers still talk about trannies - I promise nobody calls the police. It's reasonably often used at my job where we have a large photographic archive.

When you say you categorically cannot say it, how is that manifesting? Who is stopping you?

Kenny Everett always called transistor radios 'trannies' (although he did sometimes wear a dress but I don't think the two things were connected).

Even more so than 'gay', there was a word that was commonly used in decades gone by, which you categorically cannot use nowadays. If you mean pouffe I am resting my feet on one right now. 'Iron' was another one it was cockney rhyming slang the second unsaid part being the bit that rhymed (hoof) but iron is still an acceptable word. So is Ginger another cockney rhyming slang which I'll leave you to work out

Wow, that's surprising to hear - I never would have known that.

Nobody is physically stopping you; but the TRA lobby is so powerful, you would very likely be cancelled, with bad-faith motivations assumed - or at the very least 'educated'. A bit like with 'faggots', which is always assumed on the media to be a hateful slur against gay people, even though it's a perfectly normal word for an everyday meat product.

To be fair, I think its usage for a portable radio (do people even use them now, rather than just an app on their phones?) is now pretty much obsolete; so somebody saying the word - outside of specific professions such as photography - probably is using it as a slur.

Not that it stops many TRAs from repeatedly using the 'c' word for non-trans people, mind, no matter how much the people to whom they're referring object - and any dissenters are told that they are wrong to be offended by it, as it's supposedly 'just the accurate term'.

I think it's just quite obvious that trannies in photography (short for transparencies) and trannies as a pejorative term for transexual don't have anything to do with each other.

Yes, but he's been dead for over 30 years! The whole thing about 'transgender' hadn't gained any real ground by then.

In fact, that makes me think of another word that is now heavily frowned on, and called 'offensive': transvestite. Men who know they're men and don't claim to be anything else, but who like to wear traditionally 'female-coded' clothes, have now been herded in under the transgender umbrella, whether they are happy with that or not.

It’s spelled “aweful” then, at least according to the New English Hymnal. “Aweful purity.” Perhaps the more modern equivalent is “awesome”.

Yes, now you've mentioned its use in photography (which I at least wasn't really aware of), I do agree - a bit like nobody thinks anything is trying to be at all rude when they ask for 'ball cocks' and 'nipples' when used at plumbing/hardware stores.

I bet a lot of people who are outside the photography trade/hobby circle would still assume bad faith, though, without that knowledge of context.

Weren’t “trannies” once transistor radios?

Awesome itself is another word that used to command great power, but which has now been relegated to just mean 'quite good'.

Probably not so much when somebody says "I am in awe of..."; but so many people will now describe something nicely satisfactory as 'awesome' e.g. if the waiter or waitress tells you that your meals will be coming out in 5 minutes.

You could say the same about faggots the meat product though and fags meaning cigarettes as opposed to any slur.

There were transgender people then though. A friend of a friend was a trans woman in the mid 80s. I think the mass panic has made it more of a thing but I don’t really want to get involved in that discussion.

Yes

*Pedants' 😉

For crying out loud. That is really trying yourself in nots to make a point.

It used to be though.