For me, it's blast-off.
Via Metafilter, where folks are a bit younger, since they're getting things like air guitar or downloadable.
"Blast-off" as a noun signifying the launching of a rocket doesn't appear in the NYT archive until March 1952, but there are many instances of the word pair "blast off" before then, mostly to refer to storms — "a blast off the Greenland coast" — and hits in baseball — "a blast off the right-field wall." The 1952 article is titled "'Space Fever' Hits the Small-Fry; If your boy talks gibberish or hisses like a boiler, don't worry -- he's just cosmic."
The hissing represents rocket-ship take-off, and the gibberish is space-ship argot.
In apartment-house elevators, space-talk breaks out in commands like "Blast off!" when a lift starts upward, and "Brake your jets!" as an elevator comes to a landing. On auto rides, small-fry lean out alternate windows shrilling "Blast the port tube!" and "Blow the starboard rocket!"...
The space-conscious don't say "Scram"; They say "Blast off, chum!" They don't call a companion "screwy"; they say "Steady your gyros." A reproof or tongue-lashing draws the remark: "Boy, did I get my tubes scorched!"; and anyone who wanders off the point is told, "You're way out of your orbit."
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And for "Calm Down," "Cool Your Jets!"
For me, I get "TV" as the word of my birth year. Sigh.
I was born in 1954, and the word that originated that year was:
Nowheresville: An unknown or uninteresting place; limbo
Mine is Photocall.
Meh!
Lift off--blast off's replacement, a classic and utterly successful example of Orwellian linguistic brainwashing.
Lift off--blast off's replacement, a classic and utterly successful example of Orwellian linguistic brainwashing.
For 1979 the word is bagsy. I wasn't born that year however I checked out the term for that year.
People called bagsies back then.
I suspect they got slapped upside their noggin and quit using the overly British therm.
"Nitpick" for me. I can't find anything wrong with that.
These are all British culture word creations, not that there is anything wrong with that.
1945 is "mobile phone". Does that mean a walkie-talkie radio for police cars that broadcast to all in an area listening on a frequency band? It certainly was not a cell tower based computer linked relayed phone# to phone# of the 1990s origin.
All of mine are in Olde English.
Peter
"Bouffy" (1960) is a thoroughly bouffy word in this list-a-bouffy list.
I am almost exactly as old as the Space Age, having been born in the few weeks of late 1957 that the first artificial satellite was orbiting the earth.
Obviously my word is "Sputnik."
What fun! I'm 1953 and some of mine include "hippie", "pussy-whipped", and "synchronicity".
BTW there is a non-paywall site you can use ... wordorigins.org ... search on your birth year.
^^^ This, by the way, is my conclusion, made without reference the OED list.
I'm 1953 and some of mine include "hippie", "pussy-whipped", and "synchronicity".
Of course pussy-whipped is a tragically obsolete term today. Unless it's by reference to one of those hairless Sphinx cats. God damn it.
Peter
I'm as old as "internet".
That makes me feel young!
Outa my way queue jumpers!
Bagsy? Was I born in a parallel universe where people use this word?
Bouffy. Meh.
I like the next year: Chocoholic.
I'm the bee's knees. You can be so dated as to appear fresh.
Very surprised that nitpick is no older than me.
It's my wife's birth year, 1949.
Edmund C. Berkeley published
Giant Brains, or Machines That Think
which was well-reviewed in the NYT.
The term "Electronic Brain" persisted in the popular press for many years as a result.
I got "mockney." A word I encountered today for the first time. Evidently bogus cockney accents were all the rage in 1967.
1960 = "Bouffy"
I am underwhelmed.
Foodie. 1980. Yeah!
1966 = Computernik
Never heard or read that word.
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