Turn a phrase.

[Allen]

In reading the accounts of the murders from the various sources, I find that a lot of the phrases used back then are practically unkown by people today. I guess it's only natural. But it still seems odd that so many of the phrases I find familiar, are not for many people. I think I find them familiar because of all the reading I do, and the fact that I am interested in a lot of historical subjects. As an example, in Rebello on page 225:

"There was a sprinkling of children here and there; tow [two] headed boys and a couple of little girls who ought to have been in the fields or almost anywhere for that matter, except at a recital of a butchery."

I'm not quite sure why the word two is in the brackets, but I know that to be a tow head means to have fair hair, or blonde hair. I brought this up to my husband as we were talking one day, and he said he had never heard of that phrase. Neither had a few other people I asked. That got me to thinking. Are there any phrases you all found during the course of your research of the case that you found odd such as this? I'd be interested to know.


http://xml.education.yahoo.com/referenc ... ry/towhead

[Allen]

The reason I ask is I find it interesting how our language changes over time. I wonder what people think of the language and phrases used then. Some of it seems so formal as compared to now. How many today still know what some of those phrases mean? Not many people today would still use words like thence and shant in everyday conversation. I say words like that and my kids laugh. What will they think by the time my kids have grown up and had children of their own?

[Tina-Kate]

The "I don't know, but..." seemed strange to me right from the beginning. Altho this may well still be part of the vernacular in New England, for all I know. I do know that for several years now it has taken root in my own speech patterns(!). I was also suprised that even the Borden trial lawyers used "aint"...altho I recently discovered it was commonly used in upper class British society in the late 1700s to early 1800s!

[Kat]

I think this is Constantine's subject.
He also has a topic about archaic trial phrases here somewhere, I think.

[Edisto]

One seldom hears "forenoon" these days, but it was apparently quite common in the 1890s. My maternal grandparents both used a lot of quaint expressions. Instead of "Thank you," both used to say, 'Much obliged," for example. I was thinking the other day about a woman who used to visit my Grandmother. She was the second wife of a prominent doctor in Grandmother's little town. The first wife, a very refined woman, had been my Grandmother's best friend, and Grandmother had nothing good to say about the replacement. Grandmother was Irish and had a wonderful talent for imitating voices. When the doctor's new wife visited my Grandmother, she would inevitably say on departing, "Come go home with me." (Come go?) I suppose this was meant to be flattering, as if to say, "I can hardly bear to leave your company." After the other woman had departed, my grandmother would imitate her voice, complete with her very "country" accent, as if to say: "She's hopeless."

[Kat]

Edisto: You tell good stories!

My e-mail spam has increased lately 5 fold. I don't know why. It was 1 a day- now it's 5 a day.
Have you all noticed the titles?
Do you get these?
Here are some Modern Greatest Hits:

Just in time for the beach kerchief coriander
Arbitrate, dress to impress
Smallcap savvy investors only chipboard
My clean it timework
You blocked my IM! po correspondent
Re: cadre Re: my wife
Re: schaefer, It's so easy- find out yourself!
in sit in group
He sing so clinic
Re: Not take on wash woman
I can't even start to think of that. monk...
Of have no unerring facings
Remember that girl? callaghan thunderbird
I translate on flora emphasis
Go shut by relativity
and
my favorite
You are so good to me carrion past

--Are they trying to tell me something?

[Allen]

Another word I have found that I did not quite understand when I first read it was counterpane. One of the newspaper reports in describing Lizzie's room mentioned she had a light blue counterpane on her bed. I believe it was light blue, or maybe just blue. The definition says it is an old- fashioned term for a bed cover or bedspread. I had been unsure as to what type of bed covering this was.

[Allen]

I know what you mean about the spam Kat.

[Nancie]

I have always been confused by the "pink wrapper"
I guess it was just a housedress but I'd never heard
that word before.
Funny Kat about the Spam titles, they keep getting
more creative to try to intice.

[Kat]

Do they sound like they went through one of those on-line translators? I was wondering that. Like Robot-translating

[Allen]

I have always been confused by the "pink wrapper"
I guess it was just a housedress but I'd never heard
that word before.
Funny Kat about the Spam titles, they keep getting
more creative to try to intice.

Some of the spam titles I receive in my email I could not post because they are of an offensive nature. There isn't anything I can do about it.I block one address and three more take its place. Another term I always found odd is the usage of the word reefer. It is mentioned that Andrew wore a reefer. I'm not quite sure where I remember reading this I'd have to look it up. Considering the connotations that word has today, that usage seems really odd to some.

[Kat]

I never knew what a portiere was until a couple of years ago.
And the distinction between a privy and a water closet.
But we always had, an an antique mind you, a chamber pot. A really fancy one. We had a plant growing in it.

[Liz Crouthers]

Did you run out of planters?

LOL

[Kat]

Our mom liked to plant things in odd or unusual containers.
I broke it vacuuming!
We had another one which was humorous. It had a big eyeball painted in the bottom!

[Allen]

While I was rereading Murder, America I found a few more phrases you probably wouldn't hear uttered by too many in this day and age. I used yourdictionery.com to obtain the definitions these two:

cuckold

A man married to an unfaithful wife.
tr.v. cuck·old·ed, cuck·old·ing, cuck·olds

To make a cuckold of.

I have always found the term masher a little funny. In this book a man was first arrested for "mashing". I am not sure how this term came to be in use, but I have always found it a little silly.

masher

1.A kitchen utensil for mashing vegetables or fruit.

2. Slang A man who attempts to force his attentions on a woman.

I took a few minutes from checking email and such to post these, and I also quickly found a nineteenth century slang dictionary online. But I have someone waiting in line to use this computer, so I will make this quick. The change in word usage and vocabulary from then til now always fascinates me.

http://www.campchase.com/Slang/Slang-A-F.htm

[Kat]

Yesterday I was "woolgathering" at a red traffic stoplight. Then as I drove on, I wondered if *gathering wool* is a type of job which requires no concentraton what-so-ever?
I asked my pharmasist's assistant and she had never heard of the phrase!

Thanks for keeping in touch, Missy, even though it is hard right now.

[Constantine]

Checking out Allen's website, I find more than a few examples that are far from obsolete. Just from A to C:

all-fired, bad egg, balderdash, don't know beans about, bee (in spelling bee), biddy, bully for you, bunkum, conniption fit, cotton to, cracker, crazy as a loon.

[twinsrwe]

Here are a few that my Grandmother and parents used quite often: Knee-high to a grasshopper - Let's go UP town - He/She is still wet behind the ears - Nothing like putting salt in the wound - Oh, go suck an egg - I'm hungry as a horse - You born on a fence post - Were you born in a barn.

[Allen]

Checking out Allen's website, I find more than a few examples that are far from obsolete. Just from A to C:

all-fired, bad egg, balderdash, don't know beans about, bee (in spelling bee), biddy, bully for you, bunkum, conniption fit, cotton to, cracker, crazy as a loon.

I guess it all depends on where you live, because I never hear anyone around my area say cotton to, balderdash, all- fired, bully for you, or bunkum. Bunkum, according to the site, is a common saying which originated around Washington, which could be why I've never heard that particular saying here. My grandparents are the only ones I know who still use " You don't know beans about."

[Constantine]

"Bunkum" is of course very usually shortened to "bunk" these days (and has been for a long time).

[Nancie]

True, depends where you live, In Vermont they said
"up street" to mean the downtown area. We used to say "downtown" where I grew up in NJ.

[Constantine]

"Uptown" and "downtown" are in common use in New York. In Manhattan, "uptown" is (roughly) north; "downtown," south. Since I always associated these terms with north and south, respectively, I was surprised when I found out that "downtown" Brooklyn (i.e., the part nearest "downtown" Manhattan) is "up" north (actually, northwest).

[Constantine]

Only yesterday I heard "much obliged" from a co-worker (a Hispanic woman in her mid-forties who came to this country early enough to qualify as a near-native speaker of English).

"Counterpane" is used in the delightful Nightmare song from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe."

"First your counterpane goes
And uncovers your toes,
Next your sheet slips demurely from under you"

[Susan]

I heard one today, though, I don't know if its an old phrase or something more recent? I went into a local coffee shop and the man who waited on me asked how I was, I answered fine, thank you, and you? His answer was that he was "Feeling Jake".

[Constantine]

I'm happy for him and Jake.

That goes back at least to the fifties and probably well before. It means "okay," apparently.

Other non-obolete 19th century usages (some only dialectally and many used when a period flavor is desired, but certainly familiar to most): dead meat (now chiefly in "you're dead meat"), have designs on, diggings (now usually "digs"), do tell, feisty (now usual form), fit to be tied, in a fix, fixings, Gotham, go the whole hog, greased lightning, grit, guttersnipe, hankering, settle one's hash, high-falutin', hoe-down (used quite strangely in the New Faces Lizzie Borden skit: everyone wants Lizzie's trial over and done with so that they can get on with the hoe-down(!)), hornswoggle (i'll be hornswoggled), in a huff, humbug (thanks largely to Ebenezer Scrooge), knee-high to a (grasshopper), land sakes, let her rip, talks like a book, log-rolling, mad as a March hare, man alive, have a mind, mosey, no-account, nohow, notions, old man, old woman (now usually "old lady," especially for "wife"), one-horse (town), ornery, picayune, plank (plunk)down, plug-ugly (now usually literal), plum(b) (the old joke about a prune being a "plum tuckered out"), reckon, ride out on a rail, rip-roaring, rip-snorting, row, sakes alive, Sam Hill, school-marm (used mostly in ascribing pedanticism to a woman except in period references), no great shakes, shaver (just barely), pshaw (shades of Bridget Sullivan!), shucks (expletive), skedaddle, slick (now usually of hair), sockdolager (now always shortened to "sock"), spree, squatter, steady habits, store (most obvious example of all), tote (especially in tote bag), tuckered out, vamoose, varmint, whitewash.

[Allen]

My great grandmother was pretty colorful, and she used a phrase once that I'm sure is not new, but it always stuck with me because it made me laugh so hard. She was describing a near traffic accident she had, and she said that if the other car "would've had one more coat of paint" it would've hit her. That was the first time I'd ever heard that saying.

[Nancie]

Reminds me when I lived in Vermont people would
say "Mr Johnston" a lot, I never had any idea what
that meant or ever asked.

[Kat]

Our mom was raised in Pennsylvania Dutch country and would tell us to "Go read up your room." Pronounced *red.*
In other parts of the country, my friend's mothers would say "Go pick up your room." I thought that was absurd!