Words we don't use any more

Rocketstop2

What about a 'Counterpane' on the bed ?!!

That's a bit posh. We called it a bedspread.

When I started my nursing training in the early 70’s the top layer of bedding was referred to as a counterpane. There would be a top sheet, 2 cellular cotton blankets and the counterpane. The hospital counterpanes were heavy white cotton with a slightly embossed pattern.

Yes, I remember that from when I was in hospital in 1986 for a few weeks. There is a Robert Louis Stevenson poem called The Land of Counterpane, which I remember from when I was a child because I didn’t know what a counterpane was.

Is it like an eiderdown?
Bedspread?
Haven't heard those words for yonks <<-- another one.

Candlewick

When I was young an eiderdown was the puffed up duvet-type 'thing' that was the very top layer. It would be the exact width of the bed, but didn't cover the pillows. The counterpane was the large thinner covering that went underneath the eiderdown but over the blankets and pillows and hung down over the sides.

Witzend

sarahcyn

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.

My dd2 had classic three months’ colic!

My DD had colic.
She carried on having colic for years until coeliac disease was diagnosed.

The hospital counterpanes I remember in the 70’s were similar to a heavy damask style tablecloth .

Hanky Panky.

Yes they're the ones I remember too Grannynannywanny, blue as far as I recall, but probably varied hospital to hospital.

How's yer father.

Slap and tickle. A bit of the other.

More front than Blackpool
All fur coat and no knickers

sarahcyn

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..

In my boarding school one of the women we had looking after us was a "Matron Bowles" and when I saw that ad on TV I thought at first they were saying "Gets rid of Matron Bowles" rather than "Midriff bulge"! (I wish!)

We put the counterpane on top of the eiderdown and it was taken off at night. In Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, he tells of the sign on the wall in a B&B he stayed at stipulating that the "counterpane should be removed at night". Being American, he had no idea what the counterpane was - he thought it was part of the window!

And mine was pink .candlewick. I remember pulling the little tufts out when I was bored.

Here in Gainsborough and also in Hull, (where I lived, anyway) the back alley is the tenfoot.
Both my father and my partner's used to refer to people (usually other drivers) as "blithering idiots".
My mother used to refer to drunk people as "stocious" but I don't know whether that is a family or regional thing.

I thought stocious or stoatin’ drunk was a Scottish thing. I’d never heard it in Yorkshire before I moved to Scotland.

I grew up using the word 'bedspread', not counterpane. I was at loss when I heard the word for the first time when I was in hospital. I too remember it as being an item like a damask tablecloth and when there was a counterpane on the bed - as in hospital - there was no eiderdown.

I thought a bedspread was a thin decorative cover to make the bed look nice, and a counterpane was a padded eiderdown type thing that sat on top of the bed. I’m only going by what my grandparents called things in the days of candlewick bedspreads and patterned counterpanes though. I haven’t seen anything candlewick for donkeys years.

I think I remember that dressing gowns were also made of candlewick

Thinking back to my nursing days in the 70’s and the white hospital counterpanes . Patients were allowed to smoke in their beds back then 😳

Student nurses were scolded by the ward sister if they didn’t remember to lay a towel across the bed to rest the ash tray and prevent cigarette ash drifting onto the white counterpane. It seems unbelievable now!

I used a word just now, lairy, as in ‘her outfit is very lairy’, as some of mine were years ago according to my Dad.

Lino - flooring
Big Girls Blouse - my Dad ?
No Shenanigans - no rumpy pumpy

Lairy is still used quite a bit here.
Also about people getting lairy: gobby in other words.

Showing off - sulking, having a tantrum.

jacjacky i know the word 'lairy' to be used as slightly drunk