Words we don't use any more

Mothers ruin - gin

Bonny is still used regularly in the north east (especially Newcastle and its environs) but it means pretty or beautiful , not “stout” as some people on here seem to be suggesting,

What once was a 'toilet bag' is now a 'wash bag'!

Frock (for dress); "young man" for "boyfriend". My mother was always asking me if my daghter had a young man yet. Sadly she didn't live long enough to see my daughter happily coupled and subsequently married.

MissAdventure

Oh, my mum used to weqr a 'roll on'.

Did she now? I wore one as a teenager, and devilish uncomfortable it was too.

We called chewing gum speg, and anyone who was thin could be called speg or speggy. A large/overweight person could be called ‘a big boiling piece’, and a person living in sin would be described as living over the brush.

Coffin nails - cigarettes!

Peckish as hungry?

Cardamom

We always called the cupboard under the stairs the glory hole because it had everything from the ironing board to Dad's toolbox stuffed in it. But my son nearly passed out with shock when I told him that I was pleased I'd got a glory hole at my new house. Apparently the meaning has changed.

We have a little alley in Lincoln from the High Street to the river that is called the Glory Hole!

"Gamp" for umbrella is from the Dickens character Sarah Gamp in "Martin Chuzzlewit" who had a big, untidily furled umbrella.
My Junior School teacher in 1950s referred to any of our comics as "Comic Cuts"
When I was lifted over a wall as a little child it was often with the exclamation,"Over the top and the best of luck" I was horrified years later to leatn that expression was often exhanged as the men left their trenches in WW1

Magenta8

I remember 'Steptoe and Son' popularised the word "Berk" meaning an idiot or a fool. It's a pity nobody at the BBC bothered to find out its derivation. Fortunately, the word seems have fallen out of fashion.

Oh goodness - I looked it up😳. I always thought it was a mild - even affectionate - term of abuse.

A phrase, rather than a word, that my mum used to say is '(he can) run up a shutter' meaning she wouldn't do what was being asked of her. Something like 'your Aunt Nellie wants me to help her weed her garden at the weekend, but she can run up a shutter'.

I don't think I've heard anyone else say it, and I've no idea of its derivation.

There was a TV ad for the Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra which absolutely fascinated me as a child, especially the bit where the friend says "I have midriff bulge, I need a longline bra"

Midriff bulge - it sounded like some kind of mysterious congenital medical condition to me at the time..

Baker's boy. Ours was middle-aged and stout and never wore his dentures.

Panty-girdle.

Witzend

A GM of mine used to say stout - she never said fat, unless it meant meat fat.

And I’m reminded of a line in the first Forsyte Saga series ‘My dear boy, how stout you’re getting!’ As said by one of the elderly Forsyte sisters to her brother Swithin, IIRC.

Other words,

Balderdash
Rapscallion
Slattern
Brassiere

My grandfather (b. 1885) was heard by my mother (b. 1924) to say to a friend, "my, you're looking prosperous!" - according to my mother it meant "you look fat"

watermeadow

Up in’t north a ginnel were a snicket.
My mother used to call synthetic cream Zinc ointment, which was used for nappy rash. Babies also used to posset and had three month colic.
Horses got strangles, puppies caught hard pad, old men died of apoplexy. Migraine was a sick headache.
Teeth were gnashers, a nose was a conk. If brainy you were a big head or a smart-arse.
At school Domestic Science was cookery and Swedish Drill was exercises. The 11 plus was the Scholarship exam. Prefects were Monitors.
This could go on forever.

Babies still posset, though annoyingly the American "spit up" is used rather more.
I've never heard of "three month colic" but all my clients seem to have heard of "colic" even though it's a vague collection of symptoms rather than an actual disease.

sorry, please, thank you, good,

I remember 'Steptoe and Son' popularised the word "Berk" meaning an idiot or a fool. It's a pity nobody at the BBC bothered to find out its derivation. Fortunately, the word seems have fallen out of fashion.

Oreo I have never heard the word 'Gamp' before, I'm going to start using this and see if people know what I'm talking about!

Poppycock
Gasper ( cigarette)
Bun in the oven

My mum's favourite insult was "you are a fathead". And she'd say "TTFN" instead of goodbye.

I still call my duvets "quilts" as they were first known as continental quilts.

I don't often here anyone say that they will "plump" for something (choose or opt).

Gas pokers, no youngsters would have a clue!!

Great Scott!
Good grief!
Pantry
Scullery
Motor car
Slacks
Frock
Stockinged feet
My grandparents used these.

MissAdventure

Bog, for toilet.
Nice one, Cyril.

Bog is in constant use in our house, also used by several columnists I read, J Clarkson being one. Incidentally there is an old house/ museum in Kew Gardens where you can see an old promotional flyer that offers the service of coming to clean out as in empty your boghouse. I think the house was the summer house of a king.

Magenta8

in Sussex

Where my parents retired and began describing the back double to the shops than ran behind the houses as 'the twitten'

In north Berkshire, the little lanes that ran around our village were 'twichens'

My mum used to call synthetic cream “sympathetic” cream and my dad used to say if a person looked ill that they were “the colour o’ bad fat”. He used to say margarine was “like cart grease”

My grandmother born 1902 always called a mirror, a looking glass.