A Century's Worth of American Words
Thousands of words and expressions entered American English between 1900 and
1999. Every era from the Roaring Twenties to the Me Decade brought its own fads
and the language to go with them-fresh youth slang (like geetafrate and
groovy), up-to-the-minute buzzwords (like booboisie), and colourful catchphrases
(twenty-three skiddoo!). Unfortunately, most of this new vocabulary disappeared,
as trendier trends and more current events demanded new terminology.
Around the turn of the century, the dashing new sport of automobiling generated
dozens of words, but many of them didn't survive past the twenties. Imaginative
word coiners suggested motocycle, viamote, mocle, mobe,
petrocar, and goalone as names for the new motorized vehicle.
Those terms quickly stalled when Americans adopted automobile and motor
car instead. Who remembers now which services an automobile depot offered,
or knows what a roadster looked like? Henry Ford's flivver is
obsolete, and so are the terms that went with it: duster, breezer,
motoring chapeau, rumble seat, and automobilism, to name
a few.
Even some vocabulary from the end of the twentieth century is starting to have
an outdated ring. Cyberwonk, mouse potato, and lapjack,
hot buzzwords only ten years ago, have gone the way of viamote. The members
of Generation X no longer talk about dating Baldwins and Bettys, nor do they
insult their friends with the epithet brainiac. Now grown up and with
jobs, they can't exactly be called Gen X any more. As for the expression
millennium bug, in 2003 it is more extinct than motor car.
Words disappear for many reasons. In some cases, as with kinetoscopes
and Victrolas, the object they referred to no longer exists. In other
cases, words simply become unfashionable and are replaced with something new
and different. The language of young people is especially prone to this kind
of cut-throat revision. That's how geetafrate got replaced by bank
as a slang word for money. For groups at the edges of society, slang is obsolete
as soon as outsiders become aware of it. By the time dope and pot
entered mainstream English, serious marijuana users were calling it something
else.
Some words don't exit the language, they just leave the mainstream. In the 1970s,
thousands of drivers with new Citizens' Band radios started tossing around trucker's
jargon. Breaker, breaker and ten-four were as familiar
to the general public as hello and goodbye. Thirty years later,
most people's CB radios are stashed at the back of the garage, but long-haul
truckers still have their own jargon. It has simply returned to being a private
language.
Rosemarie Ostler's book, Dewdroppers,
Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of
the Twentieth Century, gives yesterday's words another chance to sparkle
before they retire to the archives for good. It's an entertaining linguistic
stroll through the decades, appealing to browsers and scholars alike. Readers
can indulge in some nostalgia or check out the lost vocabulary of other generations.
The twentieth century is only a memory, but we can still appreciate the words
we left behind.
Rosemarie Ostler
02/03/2004
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