My word!

Looking for a time waster?

I’ve got an excellent one for you: The Merriam Webster Time Traveler, which provides a look at the first known use of a word in English, by year, back to 1500, and by century back to the 12th century. (Word use prior to that is lumped together.)

Naturally, I wanted to see what was new and exciting in 1949, my year of birth.

Plenty of my words are medical/science-y /techie terms that reflect new discoveries: acid phosphatase, lidocaine, methamphetamine (gulp!), closed-circuit, supercomputer. Others are military/geopolitical in nature: nose-cone, surface-to-air, Green Beret, Titoism.

Some of the foodie1949 words sound to this ear a lot more recent than 70 years in the past.

Falafel. Raclette. Cobb salad. Piccata. Hummus.

I’m sure I never experienced any of those delights before the 1970’s. To think that they were around since 1949. Just not in Main South Worcester, I guess.

Hangtown fry, as a word, as a food stuff, however, didn’t survive. I mean, I like eggs and I like oysters, but an omelet or scrambled eggs made with oysters just doesn’t appeal. Maybe it’s the name Hangtown fry. Anyway, it’s nothing I/ve ever heard of.

There are some words on the list that seem like they should have been around forever.

Like guck. What did people call guck before 1949?

And pallbearer. Surely there were pallbearers back in the day.

Steel band hails from 1949, but my father was stationed in the Navy in Trinidad during WWII, and I’m pretty sure that there were steel bands in Trinidad while my father was making the world safe for democracy. Did no one commit the term to print before 1949? I find that hard to believe. (And my father isn’t here to ask.)

Some words sound pure 1949 to me:

Allergy shot. Anti-cavity. (Look Ma, no cavities!) Cold warrior. Clock radio. Dragon lady. (Wasn’t she a character in “Terry and the Pirates”?) Fluoridate. Position paper. (Something written by a cold warrior, no doubt.) Overnighter. Six-pack. Driving range. Especially driving range. Some of my fondest childhood memories are going to the driving range with my father to watch him hit a bucket of balls.

Other words have more of a 1960’s vibe:

Jet set. Fake out. Free-swinging. Freeze dry. Flip side. Tape deck. Telethon. Double think.

And I’m kind of bummed that lifemanship – “the skill or practice of achieving superiority or an appearance of superiority over others (as in conversation) by perplexing and demoralizing them” – seems to have been supplanted by oneupmanship.

There are words that I use all the time. Like cornball. (Born that way, apparently.)

And words I used when I worked full time. Like dog and pony show. And risk factor. And when I wanted to show off: instantiate.

Some of those 1949 words seem pretty fresh and current: veep, male menopause, ergonomics. hologram, same-sex, performatory. (Maybe because there are so many more performative people around these days.)

Others, well, not so much:

It’s not just Hangtown fry that hasn’t made it into modern usage.

Sure, there are still armless chairs with circular chairs in old-timey ice-cream parlors. But when was the last time you heard someone refer to an ice-cream chair.

There are other forty-niners of note.

The ever-present post nasal drip owes its existence to 1949. (As, of course, do I. And with a December birthday, I was most just born in 1949, but conceived in that year.) And writer’s block stems from 1949.

Not content to spend all my time traveling in 1949 wordland, I had to check out the words associated with my siblings’ years of birth.

I’m jealous of Kath (and her husband Rick). What I wouldn’t give for 1947’s own bikini, collateral damage, cookout and deviancy. Flying saucer, flop sweat, geekdom. Spinal tap, strip search, Walter Mitty. Workaholic, wrecking ball. Now that was a great year for words.

Sorry, Tom, but 1952’s no comparison. Sure, you’ve got capri pants. But cat scratch disease gave eventual rise to Ted Nugent, no? No thanks! And, oh yeah, 1952 gave us oneupmanship, which IMHO can’t hold a candela (1949) to lifemanship.

1955 (brother Rick) was a pretty good year: mind-boggling, kegger, punch list, Rasta, weirdo, zinger.

Some good words from my sister Trish’s year (1959): cloud nine, co-pay, Disneyfication, happy hour, hip-huggers, horror show. Klutz, kooky, navel-gazing, munchies. Nutjob, neatnik, no-brainer.

So many years out there. So little time.

As I said, this is an excellent little time waster – and far better thumbing through your Twitter feed to see what you-know-how is up to.