Why, I used that only this week, asking a Cribs-obsessed mate if "that nice Mr Marr was plank-spanking with the band on a permanent basis?" !

I've got a Freeview hard disk recorder but no-one seems to know what you mean when you talk about them. "PVR" as a term hasn't really sunk into the public consciousness yet, and if you say "hard disk recorder" people think you're talking about your computer. I called it a "digibox" last night and got a blank look from a mate. So now any mention of this device gets suffixed "poor man's Sky+".

Same here. Everything is taped on the Sky+ box. Even the kids say it now!

I'm still in the land of the videotape so when I say I taped it.....I mean I really taped it!

I'm young enough that I shouldn't be saying it (born mid 80's), but I can't help it... I never say DVD, it's always video.

Can I link a rant on this about things we've lost/changed over the years aside from words we never say? Tough! Going to anyway.

Apart from Snickers bars being Marathons, Cif is Jif! Olay is Ulay! The new Mr Muscle is so wrong it's distrubing & the Munch Bunch is a cow now!?? What the feck is going on? Why do companies feel the need to change their products/labelling all the time? Oh, nearly forgot... Starbust is Opal Fruits!!!

Aah... Feel better now.

...LP, tape, 8-track, cassette, CD and MP3 are all ways to deliver the music that comprises an album. Do we listen to the album or the delivery method?

BUT, I still find myself talking about "this great new record" or "so-and-so's latest LP"

Always liked this one for the radio, not used a lot though...

*edit* apologies theradish, must learn to read the whole thread and not charge in all guns-a-blazin'

Referee's Assistant - NO!! He's the bloomin' linesman!

life preservers?

We've always called cash points, minibanks, still do round here.

Am I alone in being annoyed that Barclays have copyrighted/trademarked/patented/snatched from the public realm the phrase Hole In The Wall for cash machine? It wasn't their invention, it had been around for ages, with a citation in Paul Calf's Video Diary, if I recall correctly. They can't appropriate something that already exists, can they? It's robbery, isn't it?

Or even the supremely grating "ATM Machines", which is up there with "PIN Number" in the phrases to set my teeth on edge stakes.

Don't you know how acronyms work, you doofus?!

(EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not calling you a doofus Austin!)

we still call them by their 80's AIB branding, Banklink machine. Gold.

bacon and egg pie turned into quiche.

still features tinned fruit where my nan lives.

Coming to an enormodome near you sometime soon...

Bring back rude!

"Super" is another word that seems to have fallen out of favour. The only person I hear using it now is David Pleat - "he really is a super player", "that was a super pass" etc.

Similarly, and I don't mourn its loss as it always seemed rather too twee, "bonk" seems to have been superceded by "shag".

see also Slap as in make up.

What's it called now then?

With the advent of wireless networks

'Telly' seems to have been muscled out by 'TV' and while watching [that piece of equipment] it's now the break that you wait for, not the adverts.

Yesterday my wife proudly announced that she'd bought her mum her first latte, despite the fact that she's been drinking milky coffee since since before we were born.

Well, "start" worked fine. "-up" adds nothing to the meaning, other than raising a flag that the person saying it is trying to sound cool.

Another one is "utilise": Why utilise "utilise" when you could use "use"?

we just said "I have a struggling new business"

The two are completely different things and have been all my life.

It's the meal served around 8 in the evening that isn't dinner.

Dinner is eaten in the dining room, usually with guests
Supper is eaten in the kitchen

You shouldn't have started me on Sociolinguistics - where people really got into why the words you use for things change. You're right Azeem, that they don't do it consciously. A big driver is the desire to conform (or avoid appearing to resist conforming) to the person they're speaking with.

You hear it happening all the time if you keep your ears open, and a simple game is to spend a day or two saying, in turn, "bye" or "cheerio" or "see you" when you leave someone, and note whether they respond with the same phrase as you or use a different one. Only rarely will they not echo you. It's just a spontaneous human response.

You also notice it in workplaces, families and flats, where a small group of people develop their own favoured words for things, and even invent new ones that they will use consistently among themselves. E.g. what do they call the remote control for the TV in your house?

I tend to call dinner tea, which is a working class thing; I have to make a real concious effort to call this particular meal dinner. I never really understood what supper was, it was merely something that was said on the BBC by middle class people. We also used to call lunch dinner, I am just so conflicted.

Surely the Parlour?

My old Nan had a parlour. Front room in the terraced house. Never, ever used. Anything she had of value - kept 'for best' was in there.

Actually it was used occasionally. For laying out the dead people prior to funerals.

Weren't they reinvented in the 90s:

Supper became an evening meal at a pretentious person's house, consisting not of cheese on toast but pasta (pronounced with a long 'aaa').

And said supper might be followed by pudding, consisting not of slices of white bread with raisins, butter and loads of sugar but a tiny dollop of sorbet (pronounced "sore-bay") with a sprig of mint on.

...have lounges (or so I was told only yesterday)

I called my grand-daughter a wally only last week. I use it as a gentle way of telling her I think she's been a bit daft, and she takes it in that spirit.

I urge everyone to read the wiki link above.

Forever associated with late 70s Blue Peter by a certain age group (mine). His name spread like wildfire around the playgrounds of this country with appaling fervour as a derogatory term. But I still laughed when his name came up in an episode of Spaced despite being in my early 30s at the time when I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN A WHOLE LOT BETTER. Maybe I was laughing ironicly. Maybe I was reverting to type - a tit.

Donations to Mencap are monthly from the Colibosher household.

would have been the parlour then.

The scullery is the room off the kitchen where (these days) you keep the washing machine/dryer etc etc and do the washing/ironing.

These are both types of underwear for the overweight
Pantries are for the ladies and larders for the gentlemen

I'm flabberghasted that these words are no longer in usage

Slacks were the sort of gentleman's trizer that (a) wasn't the bottom half of a suit and/or (b) required no braces. In other words, they were - like cardigans and cravats - typical items of what used to be termed "casual wear".

But I can't stop. I've got clinker to riddle and pots to side.

Certainly not interchangeable with "skinny jeans".

The last person I can recall using the word "slacks" was my maternal grandmother, who died in 1989. She was certainly *not* being ironic....

Edit: I think Archie may have it - definitely casual. My grandfather often wore slacks with a cravat, shirt and cardigan when "off duty".

Edit no.2: Blimey, I've just remembered: I inherited one of my grandad's cardigans when he died. One of my favourite ever garments.

You've put me in a very contemplative, nostalgic mood, Archie, for which: many thanks.

Blimey! I thought it was only my lot that used that. It was also a no-no to put the 'big light' on except when clearing up and hoovering after a drinks party.

It's a drawing room and a loo

A sitting room is more a 'toilet' sort of word

A loo or a toilet (depending on how many syllables you bodily function would allow).

Possibly the only one in Berkshire.

Also I don't often have sandwiches but I do eat quite a lot of stotties. But that would be me going way off topic now.

rubber johnny, is there?

It sounds quaint when you think about it, but when I hear someone say they are going to a movie, I want to slap them and say "You're from Fife, pal, and talking like that isn't going to fool anyone!"

Now we get those plastic bags through the door for us to leave our junk on the doorstep, ostensibly for charity until you read the small print and it's a big company that only gives thruppence a ton to a deserving cause when it remembers.

Thou shalt leave the wheelie somewhere vaguely in the region of the house once emptied or
thou shalt block up the owner's driveway with it and
if it snoweth or raineth leaveth the lid wide open.
(or does it just happen to me?)

That's what my dad used to call it. I don't know whether he made it up or heard it elsewhere.

They made brake pads in my day

I've been pronouncing it wrong all these years?

Should I have been saying 'Bark' instead?

Maybe it's just that if enough of the individual homes get broken, you can consider the whole thing broken?

or knocker. Or did I imagine that? Remember the man from the Pru. It's all loan sharks now. And subscriptions to music magazines.

But if you look at the small print on your "finance" agreement, you'll see that it is actually HP. Which means the car doesn't belong to you till you've made the final payment...

or at least I do.

...he'll struggle to remember the original lyrics, let along write new ones!

A really nice term that, but i think it had a geographical genesis as well? Ii seem to recall it being a south yorkshire rather than north yorkshire thing (well it was when i was a lad).

I only ever saw that in The Broons, or heard it from people pretending to be the Broons.

and a 'blimey'

...was known as 'Buff' Hoon in Army circles

Didn't people use to call quiet shoes brothel creepers?

...the plain black ones with the elasticated bit where the tongue of a shoe would normally be

That's what they called them when I arrived at my first school in Fife. I soon had the term "plimsolls" battered - literally - out of me.

using transistors instead of valvles (if you know what I mean)

Waterboarding

prams?

who has said he was always a beatnik and never a hippy, lives in Ireland.