once-common words people don’t use anymore

clunge

good story (which some probably know) abt the variable knownness of the word "twat" down the centuries (via etymonline of course)

The T-word occupies a special niche in literary history, however, thanks to a horrible mistake by Robert Browning, who included it in 'Pippa Passes' (1841) without knowing its true meaning. 'Then owls and bats,/Cowls and twats,/Monks and nuns,/In a cloister's moods.' Poor Robert! He had been misled into thinking the word meant 'hat' by its appearance in 'Vanity of Vanities,' a poem of 1660, containing the treacherous lines: 'They'd talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They'd send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat.' (There is a lesson here about not using words unless one is very sure of their meaning.) [Hugh Rawson, "Wicked Words," 1989]

I first heard it in the late 60s, when mum and dad -- then young adults -- were giggling with one another bcz one of them (almost certainly mum) had said it in my hearing, so they thought, and they had to explain what it meant (poorly explained iirc) and why it was bad for me to say. somehow unlike my mum and my sister i didn't swear much at all as a youngun so i guess the second element they achieved…

then at school as a teen i began hearing it again, used as a mocking insult one lad at another rather than the old nun sense above. curiously at school it was always said to rhyme with "hat" whereas mum and dad said it to rhyme with "squat"…

etymonline also has a strong story abt git, from 1706 in scotland, where one gregor burgess "protested against the said Allane that called him a witch gyt or bratt"

i'd like to know if browning ever realised his error tho

My dad also says it to rhyme with squat. I, like many other people I think, thought of it as akin to twit and didn’t learn THE TRUE MEANING till I went to university, I think.

It wasn’t actually on the syllabus.

browning is out of fashion academically

my parents mistook this word to mean “butt”, and therefore used it fairly liberally until i guess they found out because i haven’t heard it from them in years

i'd like to know if browning ever realised his error tho

According to Bill Bryson d Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining his mistake to him. (citation needed)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/735078-the-poet-robert-browning-caused-considerable-consternation-by-including-the

I skipped the second “it” on first reading of your post, Tracer, and thought: wow, embarrassment has never hit me quite that hard.

lol

*giggle*

now enjoying my very made-up picture of the victorian literary world, with the victorian ashley pomeroys saying "lol lol lol browning but tbf it is a very obscure old word" and the victorian tom ds telling them that actually everyone knows it perfectly well (except apparently browning)

Am now deep into oblivious Victorian uses of twat

https://i.imgur.com/4GS9JzE.jpg

Exploration of Twat

https://i.imgur.com/UhaAXVW.jpg

Gerhard Rolfs: spent over a month in the Twat

What a story though

One to tell the kids..

...In the Twat, as a Mussulman
Don't stop till you get enough

Wikipedia also mentions a "traveling-wave amplifier tube". Which leads me to this page, which has a good example of comedy that uses negative space as a punchline:
https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Traveling_wave_tube.html

"A TWT has sometimes been referred to as a traveling wave amplifier tube (TWAT), although this term has fallen out of use."

My own mother called me a 'twerp' yesterday and I thought of this thread. And then I thought of Kurt Vonnegut:

INTERVIEWER

What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?

VONNEGUT

It’s a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.

Thanks, mum.

I was wondering earlier what word could best be substituted for twat. Twerp, while obviously milder to most non-Browning ears, is probably it.

ooh i don't agree with that at all, they're *very* different, twerp has much less vehement hostility and is also (if used affectionately) less affectionate

i ilx-searched twerp to see if anyone uses it except me (ans = yes) or as often as me (ans = daver popshots uses it a lot also)

Divided by a common insult.

when I was a kid in the 80's someone reprimanded me for using "twat" told me it meant I was calling them a pregnant fish

I think once you reach a certain age it’s harder to be a twerp. Elon Musk can still be a twerp and a twat. Kelvin MacKenzie is just a twat.

I was told a prat was a pregnant fish.

Twerp definitely much gentler* than twat, and essentially floats free of any meaning beyond 'a bit of a wally' (see also 'numpty').

*certainly when deployed by my mum.

tubular (Also, do you live in a country other than France that uses a comma as a decimal point? Do you know how this difference came to be?)

Does anyone say full stop anymore or was that just from the age of telegrams?

I used "full stop" at the end of an article last week!

https://www.stereogum.com/2191562/baroness-yellow-and-green-turns-10/reviews/the-anniversary/

Always assumed”twunt” was an ilx portmaneau, but now words don’t “mean” anything

i think twunt might come from b3ta or possibly before that. it's not from ilx though, just general UK internet

full stop is just British for period so yes it's used all the time

maiden/maid (the latter for anything other than a housecleaner, and even for that becoming less common).

You still hear maiden all the time if you're a cricket fan!

don't forget about twit

twit was roughly equivalent to dipshit afaik

There were plenty of slang words for pudenda that I would've used as a teenager. Fanny, minge, radge, snatch, axe wound...anything but twat.

^^^ revived by the first Avengers movie in 2012!

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=facepalm

what happened to smdh. bring it back.

not come across a 429 error before. JUst got one there. So think I might need to start using an alternative to google.

lmao still hanging on but rofl is in really bad shape these days, sad to see. when was the last time someone even roflmaoed?

I miss pmsl which I thought had real potential but afaict it never spread much beyond UK teens on bebo and myspace

I am very glad the cutesy internet speak of late 00s / early 10s (interwebs etc) seems to be almost extinct though because that shit got unbearable for a while

I was struck by this article a couple of days in the newspaper about a feud between George Best and Bobby Charlton:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/aug/10/the-feud-between-best-and-charlton-that-shattered-manchester-united

Quoth Bobby, "so many young people on the ‘scene’ have the attitude that nearly everything and ordinary people are ‘sick’. They behave as if the peak of senility is reached at the age of 25 and they must wring every drop out of life by then whether they offend other people or not.” (Bobby) goes on to attack those who insist on being “cool”, “gas” and “with it”."

It's interesting how "sick" has come full circle.

Did people use "vouchsafe"? Shakespeare loves it.

Reminds me of a Proust translation where the literal "He did not respond" became "He vouchsafed no answer" in English.

“beetling” to mean looming, jutting up etc most commonly used with eyebrows but have also read it in conjunction with hills, cliffs

Jordan Peterson seems to be the only person in the world who still says "up yours"

Not really the right thread but I couldn’t find a better one:

“Invincible” is pretty common word but in all my 43 years, despite being a big reader, I’ve never heard or seen the word “vincible” until today.