Words from a past generation

Ne'er do well

CanadianGran interesting post.

To me a Chesterfield is a certain design of sofa i.e. low button back and usually leather, rather than an old fashioned word for sofa. Also a chest of drawers is just that where as a dresser has shelves above the drawers.

My liberty bodice had suspenders to hold my stockings up!

They were called liberty bodices because they didn't have bones like corsets did.

I said of a talkative school boy that he had been inoculated with a gramophone needle-

My younger colleague (nearly young enough to be my granddaughter) had never heard the expression, but she got the point.

Back in the late 60s one of the regulars in our local went to work in New York. The accommodation agency asked if he was gay and he responded with “I suppose I’m quite a happy chap”.

Please and thank you

Fewer when referring to a collective noun, as in, there are fewer policemen. Now people seem to say less instead.

Blimey
Toodles
The pictures
The doings

Go on Lemongrove, tell them what an Eartha Kitt & a Richard the Third are?

Grammeretto
Going for an Eartha is Cockney rhyming slang ( Eartha Kitt)
As with all CR slang you use the first part ( which doesn’t rhyme) ?
So going for a Ruby ( a curry) is from Ruby Murray,
Going up the apples (stairs) from apples and pears,
Using your minces ( eyes) from mince pies,
Having a butchers (look) from butchers hook.Etc.

That's just reminded me of Shanks' Pony.

I said to GD yesterday 'Home James, and don't spare the horses', which my mother used to say whenever it was time to leave. GD looked at me as though I was crazy, and told me that I should take more care of the horses!

Blood and sand and stomach pills

It sounded odd to me when my DS1 texted me back with "Oh dear" in reply to a report of how his Nanna is doing. (Not very well at all at the moment)

I don't know what else he could have said, but it did seem tame and old-fashioned for a 37-year-old.

Beverage, when offering tea or coffee

Oh dear this is embarrassing. We once advertised on one of those online search-for-a-builder websites for someone to fit out our glory hole. Our offspring were horrified. Apparently it has a much livelier meaning for their generation than the large cupboard where broken vacuum cleaners, unused sport equipment and suitcases are kept. Fortunately the builder was as innocent as us

I’m a “ Gordon Bennett” user as well, Amagran.
The other one I use is “Oh my giddy aunt”, but I don’t know whether I made that one up!

Gordon Bennett!
I said it to my GS yesterday. He said 'I never hear anybody else say that, Grandma'.

It's better than a clout in the eye with a damp rag.
That was one of my mother's favourite expressions when accepting a compromise. I use it quite often myself.

Hell's bells and buckets of blood.
But not in front of the GCs - they're too impressionable!

My dad always says ‘put that wooden block in the hole’ meaning ‘close the door’!

Galoshes.

My FiL would always refer to our DD as ‘our wench’! A Midland phrase which never failed to wind up a rebellious teenager!

When telling the time I always say five and twenty past or five and twenty to instead of twenty five past or to.

My mum says “she’s no better than she ought to be”
I still don’t get it!

Looks like the wreck of the Hesperus.
Going to hell in a handcart.
My mother used to say that she had a bone in her leg if she didn't want to do something and I also had a liberty bodice.

I still use a lot of the aforementiond words and phrases. My son is doing his best to keep Cockney rhyming slang alive, our conversations sometimes sound like a script from 'Only Fools and 'Orses'! Our GC often seem to be speaking a different language to us, and they probably think the same of things we say, but I guess it's the same with every generation.