'Spiffy' Words College Students Used in 1916
 

I thought this was cute. It heavily references an old issue of the Trident (Tri Delta's magazine):

http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-hist...s-used-in-1916

Can't say I've ever heard the state I'm in referred to as South Cackalacky. Maybe we should bring that one back!

How interesting!

I've often thought about outdated slang when thinking about Gamma Phi Beta's colors, and the use of the word "mode". I think most collegians think it means "light brown", but I remember reading in the Crescent at some point that it actually meant something like a lighter shade of a particular color. But even in the OED, the closest color reference is that mode could be any of a number of shades of gray. It seems that the usage of mode as Gamma Phis know it, is pretty much only known to and used by Gamma Phis.

It makes me wonder what other kinds of words we use now that will be so utterly gone from the lexicon in 150 years that it'll be hard to find any reference to them.

I live in North Cackalacky myself, and I hear it used occasionally, typically in a corny joking way. Sort of like when I used to live in Upstate New York, and sometimes people called Rochester Roch-cha-cha.

I've heard several of these used and I've read more, especially in older books like the older Nancy Drews and Bobbsey Twins. "Gee, Ned, you're a brick!"

I love how slang goes in and out of style. Remember the book Spare Change, where the sorority girls use, "is he interesting?" as code for, "is he Jewish?"

I have some old family albums, from great aunts who went to college in the 1920s, and throughout the books is "Oh, You Kid!"

According to this oh-so-scholarly listicle, maybe Cackalacky is more a North Cackalacky thing anyway. And it also gives legitimacy to “surcee”- my SC-native husband uses that one all the time, and I never heard it before until I met him.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/c...hat_would.html

I did see a shirt on campus that said South Cackalacky on it, so I suppose it's more of a thing that I thought. Cabinet is a good term for Rhode Island too!

Just recently a sister of mine referred to the name we called a certain frat:



"Exxons"



As in . . . crude, rude and unrefined.



Now, weren't we clever??? (And crude, rude and unrefined ourselves!)

Some 80's slang in today's culture would be horrifying, I think. "It's the bomb!" meant something was the greatest, the best. Shout that out today? You'd set off a panicky stampede.