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Mini: Expressions That Died · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to why we do what we do? Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to why we do what we do?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Mini, I'm your host Abraham, and I'm Shane Slave Queen
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: no cap all right.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: That made me throw up a little bit.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, say, did everyone just cringe so hard that they
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: cracked their teeth? I understand because we are talking about
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: expressions today. We've actually talked about idioms a number of times,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: but this one's this one's unique. These are going to
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: be This is a whole different thing.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: This is like when when something comes up and it's used,
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  Speaker 4: and it's used a lot, and then it kind of
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  Speaker 4: dies off, you know, over time, because it's just not
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: useful for folks anymore, or they don't really care about
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: it anymore, or it just doesn't contact any reward anymore
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: because now.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Adults have found it and kids hate us for it.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: There's the really unique cultural selection of language. There's this
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: ongoing I think language evolves and so these sort of
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: new phrases and sayings and slang and idioms sort of
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: pop into existence. And that's how Bootylicious ended up in
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the dictionary, which.
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  Speaker 4: Is true, by the way, if you all want to
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: look up bootylicious. It is in the Webster's Dictionary, which
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: is just fascinating to me. I just think that that's
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  Speaker 4: so fun, right, no shade towards Beyonce. It's just more
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  Speaker 4: so that bootylicious is the word that ended up in
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  Speaker 4: that in the dictionary now, and we're just kind of like,
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  Speaker 4: as a culture, we've been okay with that.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: No shade is kind of its own expression, and most
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: people listening to us who are our age will remember
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: expressions such as sick and dis and bling and calling
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: someone dog but spell a dawg and what's kraken?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And home skillet and saying bad when.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Something is good and then stop trying to make fetch,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: well just fetch people saying fetch huh, yeah it's And
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: some of these are even kind of still around, Like
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I think people still say sick a lot.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like I still hear that.
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  Speaker 4: I hear sweet still, like somebody calling something sweet like,
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: oh yeah, that's sweet, Like I hear that often oh yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Someone learning English for the first time would have maybe
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a hard time wrapping their head around that use of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the word sweet in that con say yeah, great, basically right.
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  Speaker 4: That's exactly it now, we have terms like yeat and
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: sleigh and cap and riz and I hate that I
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: had to say all of those and a bunch of
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: other random phrases that feel like made up nonsense. But
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  Speaker 4: that's kind of how free our phrasing felt to generations
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  Speaker 4: before us. And actually that's kind of a fun thing
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: to think about what we were saying when we were
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: kids and our parents were hearing us say, and how
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: much they hated that. Like we were kind of talking
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: about this before we recorded today, and some of the
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: slang that kind of stuck with us too, right, like
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: you know, we are both children of the nineties. Yeah,
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: we got stuck with kind of like the extreme sports,
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: like kind of like surfer lingo, like radical and awesome,
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: and you know, and it kind of evolved in like
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: you'll hear people our age say dope still like something
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: is dope, but like this, which you know, which is fine,
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Like but it's funny because, like I say, we were
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: kind of talking about this, I say gnarly still, like
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh man, it's gnarly or rad I'm like,
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: oh my god, that's so rad.
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  Speaker 3: And I'll say that which is love. Rad is such
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  Speaker 3: a great term. But again, that's generational. It's very specific
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: to our generation, like people that are much younger, like
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: did you say rad uh? Don't don't say that. You
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  Speaker 3: know it's gross, But I think it's fascinating that kind
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  Speaker 3: of every generation has.
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  Speaker 2: That, yeah, exactly, and it always will, Like this is
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: just going to keep going. This is this has been
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: going on for some time, and that's sort of the
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  Speaker 2: path that we're on. And I think it's worth acknowledging,
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  Speaker 2: Like it feels weird for us to say things like
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: yeat and and dislay and everything, because like it's past
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  Speaker 2: the time where we were still participating in the sort
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: of evolution of the language treadmill that has expressions and idioms,
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  Speaker 2: and like the kids who are use these terms these
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  Speaker 2: days will continue using them, and then their kids will
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  Speaker 2: be like, ew, you're old, Like why are you saying
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  Speaker 2: that weird stuff. A lot of them will die off,
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  Speaker 2: some of them will like I think even Riz has
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  Speaker 2: kind of already sort of dug its own grave, but
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  Speaker 2: some of them will probably stay around for.
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  Speaker 1: A while well.
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  Speaker 4: And I think this is a really important thing to remember,
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  Speaker 4: is that, like you know, maybe in this context and
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  Speaker 4: maybe this is something that we can do on another
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  Speaker 4: mini but it's the kids that come up with what's
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  Speaker 4: cool and trendy. The kids are the ones that do that,
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  Speaker 4: not adults. Adults have never been cool. We are not trendy,
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  Speaker 4: We are not cool, and the kids who do that,
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  Speaker 4: And so when adults start using terms that the kids use,
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  Speaker 4: the kids go, that's not cool anymore.
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  Speaker 3: We've moved on.
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  Speaker 4: And that's important I think to remember is that if
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  Speaker 4: you are in your twenties or thirties and you're saying riz,
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  Speaker 4: then that means you have already aged out of cool.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And then those kids will become adults, and then you know,
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  Speaker 2: then our kids will be making up the new terms.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: So which which of these expressions stand the test of time.
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  Speaker 2: It seems like the most useful ones are the ones
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  Speaker 2: that are and the most sort of well, more commonly
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  Speaker 2: adopted and more widespread. Those ones really seem to. But
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: what I thought would be fun is that to considering
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  Speaker 2: this all these weird expressions that exist, and there are
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  Speaker 2: so many that we use now that it seemed really weird,
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  Speaker 2: and that they seemed weird when they were invented to
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: people before us. They seem weird to people who came
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: after us, and they probably won't stand the test of time,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: and so I thought it'd be fun to discuss some
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  Speaker 2: of these old timy ones that people don't really use anymore,
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  Speaker 2: that did not stand the test of time, just to
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  Speaker 2: highlight this sort of weird language treadmill that we're on.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe our discussion will even revive some of them, but
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  Speaker 2: probably not.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, probably not so. The first one that we're going
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: to talk about is ads.
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  Speaker 2: That was such a twenty twenty four one to do
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: where ads have taken over.
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  Speaker 3: Uh huh.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: The actual first one here is know your onions? Have
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  Speaker 2: you heard this one before?
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  Speaker 3: Never heard this phrase? Never? Never in my life have
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  Speaker 3: I heard this one?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, I had not heard know your onions? This is
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  Speaker 2: from the nineteen twenties. Essentially, this just meant know your stuff.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: And apparently you could also say know your cum quats,
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  Speaker 2: which means you apparently don't know your stuff, as what
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  Speaker 2: I saw on the website here, So know your onions
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  Speaker 2: a guest means no, you're like you know what you're
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: talking about?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, all right.
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  Speaker 4: There's also make a whoopee, which I'm gonna say I
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: have heard make whoopee, which we're going to talk about.
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  Speaker 4: But make a whoopie. I had not heard. Yeah, you'd
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  Speaker 4: heard this before, right.
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  Speaker 2: Not make a whoopee. It does to me like this
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  Speaker 2: sounds like a euphemism for going.
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  Speaker 3: Pooma, which is hilarious. I love that.
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  Speaker 1: I had not heard make a whoopie before.
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  Speaker 4: So it's another nineteen twenties phrase that meant to have
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  Speaker 4: a great time, often or usually in the context of
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  Speaker 4: throwing a party. So making a whoopee was throwing a party.
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  Speaker 4: I would imagine whoopee being the phrase whoop bee.
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  Speaker 3: Like kind of that.
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  Speaker 4: So yeah, it evolved eventually to just meaning you're having sex,
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  Speaker 4: Like making whoopee is just making like having sex.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen twenties parties were probably a lot of that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: this is a weird one. Okay, So this was a
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  Speaker 2: name for something. It was called a trick cyclist. Have
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  Speaker 2: you heard that one before?
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  Speaker 3: No? I hadn't heard this one.
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  Speaker 2: So apparently this started in the eighteen nineties and they
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  Speaker 2: said say it fast and that'll help you. So I'm like,
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  Speaker 2: all right, trick cyclist. I still didn't get it. Apparently
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  Speaker 2: I had actually looked this up separately. This is referring
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  Speaker 2: to a psychiatrist. So I guess it's because they kind
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: of sound similar, trick cyclist and psychiatrist. And I was like,
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  Speaker 2: this sounds like you asked a four year old to
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  Speaker 2: say psychiatrist and what they said was trick cyclist. And
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  Speaker 2: they're like, ah, that's great, let's call them trick.
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  Speaker 4: Cyclist from now on, which sure, I mean, honestly, that
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  Speaker 4: is the highest form of comedy. When your friends say
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  Speaker 4: a word wrong and then or say a phrase wrong,
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  Speaker 4: and then you just lay into that forever about how
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  Speaker 4: they said this things wrong. That's what common really is.
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  Speaker 4: That's how that's a mark of a good friendship.
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  Speaker 1: You know, comedy gold right there.
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  Speaker 4: Comedy gold. There's also the term being counter. I have
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  Speaker 4: definitely heard this. I've heard this one a lot.
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  Speaker 1: I heard it before too, I think, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I think it's around Yeah. So in the nineteen sixties
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  Speaker 4: this was about an accountant, but it's started to mean
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  Speaker 4: someone who handles finances. So basically what it means is
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  Speaker 4: a being counter is to somebody who handles money, counts money,
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  Speaker 4: counts coins and all that stuff, like or it just
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  Speaker 4: kind of like keeps track of finances.
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  Speaker 3: That's what a being counter is.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the beans.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is another interesting one. It was send them
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  Speaker 2: to Coventry. From that phrasing, you might even be able
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: to get what this is referring to. There was no
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: clear date on when this rose to popularity or when
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  Speaker 2: it fell out of it. Have you heard send them
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  Speaker 2: to Coventry?
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  Speaker 3: No?
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  Speaker 4: I have never heard the word Coventry used outside of
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  Speaker 4: the neighborhood I grew up in. I grew up in
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  Speaker 4: a neighborhood called Coventry Forest, and I have never bothered
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: to look up what the word Coventry meant.
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  Speaker 1: I think there's also even a city called Coventry. But
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  Speaker 1: what this refers to in this case, you would say
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  Speaker 1: someone to Coventry when you were ostracizing someone or maybe
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  Speaker 1: giving them the silent treatment. So it was someone has
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  Speaker 1: done something, we want to show them they're wrong by
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  Speaker 1: cutting them out of social things. You're sending them to Coventry.
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  Speaker 1: Is the saying? So kind of a weird one, but
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: that was that was the thing.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's also tickety Boo, which I had never heard of,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: and it sounds like a candy you'd find in Willy
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: Wank's chocolate factory.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or like something you might say to an infant.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly. In the early nineteen hundreds, this meant
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: that everything was fine or sort of quote all good here,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: kind of like, yeah, that's fine. So somebody might ask
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: how's your flight? Maybe not in the early nineteen hundreds,
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  Speaker 4: maybe later right early, they'd be like.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: How was your five mile an hour carriage?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: How's your carriage ride? You know, how are your horses?
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: And they might respond quite tickneyboo? Thanks, But I imagine they.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Said it like this.
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  Speaker 4: They probably ah sh quite liked the nineteen twenties, like
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: radio announcer of voice. That's that's how people talked back then.
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  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so apparently tickneyboo just meaning like, oh yeah, it's
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: all good, thanks man. That's that's a hard one to
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: imagine and trying to incorporate into modern vernacular.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Could you imagine trying to make that cool?
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  Speaker 1: Like how's your coffee? Tikenyboo? They're like, are you having
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a stroke?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Should I ban you from entering my establishment ever again
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: for uttering that phrase in front of me?
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what are you doing? Are you human?
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: Somebody guys who says ticknyboo now would never pass a
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: I'm not a robot capture for multiple reasons really, but yeah, yeah, exactly,
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  Speaker 4: all right.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: So you know, some things move from slang to simply
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: fully embedded into our language too. So some things that
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: we now accept as being sort of common terms were
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: once the sort of idiomatic expressions, and one of them
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: is the word creepy, which was invented by Charles Dickens.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, I think that's something that's really
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: thing about all of this, right, there are expressions that
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: die that come back or they end up making it
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: in kind of going back to what we said at
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: the top of the episode, where these words or these
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: phrases will end up kind of becoming commonplace. And you know,
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: there is the we did an episode on idioms that
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: kind of talk about this, but the idea that like
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: something will move from being metaphorical or kind of like
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: weird or slang, and as it gains practicality, we'll move
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: into a space where it will be useful and kind
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: of stay on the test of time. It will it
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: will continue forward. And there's lots of phrases that we
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: have inside of our own language that have done that.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: And you know, I think the one thing I say
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: often that has kind of stood the test of time.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Is dude, I say dude all the time.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are quite a few, I think, and there
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: are some that has even become nearly technical jargon. They're
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: used so often and been so fully incorporated into our language,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: and language is just going to keep doing that. It's
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: going to keep evolving, it's going to keep changing. Some
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: things will become offensive, while other things will become more noise,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: some things will become slang, while some of those slags
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: might become part of the language. It's just how language evolves,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: and that's totally okay. And so the sort of but
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: why though section of this is first of all, as
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: you said, see our episode on idioms. But yeah, just
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: as a quick summary of that slang and phrases and expressions,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: they're like quick cultural shorthand for communicating, often in a fun,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: contemporarily relevant way, and often has sort of an inside
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: joke type of feel.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: So I think it's.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Sort of stimulating in that way that it sort of
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: just makes you laugh a little, and also like it
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: just becomes a efficiency thing too. People often will use
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: shorthand idioms instead of sayings to communicate a lot.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, like we said, there are some things that
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: will stay in some things that it will not, and
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: it's you'd never know until it does. I can't imagine
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: that Rizz is going to stay around for a while,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: but you just never know. One hundred years from now,
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: somebody be like, man, that's Riz, then that's yeah, don't
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: misuse it, but it'll be fun.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I think moral of the story, people say the darnedest things.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: That's the best way to end that, for sure.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I think that's all we have to say about this.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Anything you'd like to add or anything that I forgot,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: stay read. Thank you all for listening. This is Abraham
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: and this is Shane. Why we Do what we Do?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Mini is out.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.