Slang Phrases from the 1920s That Maybe We Should Start Using in the 2020s

Some good ones:

2. "Applesauce!": "Horsefeathers!"

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6. Bimbo: refers to a macho man

What? Okay we shouldn't use that one. Another term that's completely changed meaning is "cake-eater," which meant ladies' man in the 1920s, and, to the extent it's used today at all, now means gay dude.

9. "Bushwa!": "Bullshit!"

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21. Four-flusher: someone who mooches off the money of others in order to feign wealth

I don't think that's what that one really means. It means a loser who is never able to actually win (that is, get the full five cards for the flush) and so has to pretend.

And also, I don't think it ever actually went completely out of use.

Jonah Goldberg is the definition of a four-flusher -- a desperate sweaty poser, always trying to bluff people into thinking he's well-educated and highly intelligent, always pretending he's got the full flush.

23. Giggle water: liquor, alcoholic beverage

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31. Jake: okay, fine, as in "Don't worry, everything’s jake."

That one really shouldn't have ever fallen out of use.

37. Mrs. Grundy: an uptight or very straight-laced individual

We've got a lot of Mrs. Grundys in the NeverTrump Frump club. Kurt Schlichter calls them "the fussies."

The people competing with Millennials to show off on twitter how exquisitely sensitive to microscopic offenses they are, and how very emotionally outraged they can become about these Princess and the Pea-level bothers every single day.

Weird, in my day, men used to show how impervious they were to bothers and even physical pain, and used to try to stifle their emotions and baby-girl upsets to show they were the masters of themselves.

Now, NeverTrump "men" compete with teenage girls to win medals in neurotic hypersensitivity and emotionally fragility in the daily Ree n' Squee Olympics.

59. Zozzled: shitfaced

That's a good one. A bit Bernie Wooster-ish.

posted by Ace at 08:03 PM

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