1920s Slang Terms We Need To Bring Back Right Now

Last weekend, I spent all my clams getting spifflicated on gigglewater and dancing like a hopper to the best whangdoodle in town, at least until a whiskbroom broke up the party, which had all of us yelling, “Applesauce!” but now everything’s just ducky!* Have I lost my mind? No! I simply know my onions about speaking like a flapper, thanks to a new video from BuzzFeed on 1920s slang terms that we need to bring back immediately. I mean, read those sentences I just wrote, because that's literally all the proof you need. Our 2015 slang is such a snooze by comparison.

The video gives us ten slang terms popular in the “Roaring Twenties,” an era characterized by economic prosperity and a cultural shift away from tradition: the cinema, radio, and automobile made everything “modern”; flappers (liberated young women with bobbed hair) created a new ideal of womanhood; and jazz rose to popularity. Prohibition banned the importation and manufacture of alcohol between 1920 and 1933 which led to a culture of bootlegging and illicit alcohol production—it’s no surprise that a lot of 1920s slang has to do with booze! The video uses slang to track the economic demise of its narrator (A sample: “God, I just lost everything! I’m ruined—I need me a gigglewater!”), looking ahead to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which would usher in the Great Depression.

These are a few of my favorites from the video (which will explain my weekend shenanigans to the rest of you modern folk):

BuzzFeed used a couple of different articles as sources (here and here); be sure check them out for even more delicious, ridiculous words. A few that I simply have to point out include:

"Handcuff": Engagement Ring

"Goof": A Sweetheart

"Father Time": A guy who’s more than 30 years old (The horror!)

"Bank’s Closed": No kissing!

"Sharpshooter": Someone who is a good dancer and is generous with his or her clams

Have fun, friends—these words are the cat's meow!

*For the record, I did not actually spend last weekend getting zozzled at a speakeasy, unless we can pretend that “zozzled at a speakeasy” is code for “watching Netflix on my couch.”

Images: Library Of Congress; YouTube(5)