Everyone reaches a stage in their life when they realise "I
am no longer youthful and hip"--for me, that moment arrived when I became conscious of the
fact that I still said “hip”.
For others this unwelcome revelation may come when they
realise that words and phrases they were under the impression were still in
common parlance are, in fact, no more. I have reached a stage in my life that
when individuals employ an entry from the list of taboo terms, I recoil in empathetic humiliation. I say mutual, more often than not the speaker in question is
(blissfully? Really? Is anyone truly blissfully mocked?) unaware they are the
cause of furrowed brows and sniggers all about them.
- "To bone up on something". Familiar with parents and teachers everywhere: funnily enough, this one has nothing to do with inadvertent turgidity of the male member. Indeed it means to study in order to increase knowledge of a particular subject or topic.
- "Bog standard" is not, in fact, toilet humour. Instead it refers to something that is plain and simple; without frills.
- Such sayings as "knee high to a grasshopper" and "as sure as eggs are eggs". Their explanations are straightforward and the turns-of-phrase quaintly effective: why do we continue to dismiss them from fashionable conversation?
Certainly, the person who enters the danger zone opening sentences with the age-old favourite, “well, when I was young…”, is asking for gentle parody but spare a thought for those keeping the above and similar
alive. If one considers today’s watery equivalents, such gems as: “I’m not
being funny but…”, “it was well good/funny/awesome”, “yer know what I’m, like,
sayin’?” then it comes as no surprised when everyone over the age of 25 groans and rolls
their eyes at an utterance.
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| burlesque galore |
