Phraseology - then and now

"Hubba hubba" has dropped out of American pop culture as a saying and has been replaced with numerous equivalents. Referring to someone who is neat or really great as "top drawer" would draw a curious look from someone nowdays. During my heyday if we wanted to make a girl notice that we appreciated her appearance, we would usually give a wolf whistle instead of saying something. Nowdays I don't really know what boys say to impress a girl other than maybe "She's hot" or "She's cool" which, of course, have the exact opposite meaning temperature wise, but sexually have the same meaning.

During World War II, the saying "Kilroy Was Here!" began to appear as graffiti at home and wherever the American military traveled abroad. Eventually the saying came to represent America's presence throughout the world. Today the saying is arcane and wars since then have not produced a similar phrase. Instead the phrase seems to be replaced with "Yankee go home".

While there are many sayings and myths that almost everyone recognizes such as it is bad luck to walk underneath a ladder, many sayings are more obscure and are fun to resurrect everyone once in a while. My father used to say that "One hand washes the other", which I think means that nothing gets done unless we work together. My Uncle Bill used to refer to a person who was rather odd as one who was "overly smart". Another old saying is to refer to a person who is a party pooper or sourpuss as a "crepe hanger". Years ago when someone died, a person would hang black crepe paper on the door of the deceased. The crepe hanger became known as one who bore bad tidings.

Here are some more phrases that have faded from everyday use.

"Put that in your pipe and smoke it." A closing line after telling someone off.
"I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut".
"In like Flynn." This meant that someone had it made or had an inside track to something.
"Mad as a wet hen."
"Don't put your cart before the horse."
"Don't count your chickens before they hatch".
"Birds of a feather flock together".
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."
"Snug as a bug in a rug".
"If you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas".
"An apple doesn't fall too far from the tree." This is similar to "like father, like son".
"Don't take any wooden nickels."
And the old standby. "A bird in hand is better than two in the bush."

If anyone has more old sayings, send them to me and I will compile them and print them in another editorial.

Whenever I read the quaint way they used words in writing years ago, I wonder if they talked that way as well. Writing years ago seemed much more formal and elegant. Here is a description of the Minonk Fans basketball team from a 1925 Minonk News-Dispatch article. "Arrayed in their natty new blue panties and shirties the Minonk Fans went out Saturday night and gave the Peoria Portmans a neat trimming. It was no cinch, nor a pink tea affair and only the whistle stopped two worthy quintets from battling to the queen's taste." Can you imagine a reporter writing like that today? What exactly does the queen's taste refer to?

Today we have so many new ways of saying things that it is hard sometimes to understand what someone is saying. I don't know why this is but I feel it is because of the pervasive effect of television and its writers on our speech habits. Television writers try to come up with cute or snappy phrases for entertainment value. Unfortunately, these sayings invade our nation's vocabulary like a cancer. It seems now that it is more important for our conversations to be entertaining rather than informative.

Some common sayings or colloquialisms used today that I don't like are:
"Don't even go there." Why not just say that you don't want to talk about it?
"Having a bad hair day". Is this any worse than having a bad stomach day?

Even worse are the trite, meaningless responses such as "Whatever" or "Duuuhh". Can you imagine President Bush responding to a reporter's question at a news conference with "Duuuhhh?". The most egregious abuse of the English language today is the use of the words "like" and "you know". Some people start every sentence with the word "like" and end it with "you know". An example of this is could be, "Like, it's time to go home, you know?"

Today's music and sports have introduced new phrases into our language, most of it bad. Everytime I hear some idiot yell, "Yo duh man", whenever Tiger Woods hits a golf ball, I want to scream. How many times have you heard the phrase "He don't" in our popular songs today? Or how about "I got" or "She got"?

For some odd reason, we choose to mimick the language of rock stars and sports heros rather than the language that was brought over from England. Joseph-Marie de Maistre, 1753-1821, once said, "Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language." With the increase in profanity and senseless colloquialisms in our language, it appears that our culture continues to be eroded to the level of the masses rather than elevated to the level of the learned and esteemed.