My Mother sent me this today. Makes me sad to see words disappear, like old buildings, typewriters, wrist watches and almost everything else. (I'm sure there are some things I would not miss should they disappear).

They forgot whippersnapper, or maybe that is older than the 50's and forgotten by more than one generation.

Love this one.....remember them all!

Murgatroyd, remember that word? Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Murgatroyd? Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Lost Words from our childhood: Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really!

The other day a not so elderly lady said something
to her son about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said "What the heck is a Jalopy?"
OMG (new phrase)! He never heard of the word jalopy!! She knew she was old.... but not that old. Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.

These phrases included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry."

Back in the olden days we had a lot of 'moxie.' We'd put on our best 'bib and tucker' to' straighten up and fly right'.

Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!

We were 'in like Flynn' and 'living the life of Riley", and even a
regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell?

Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers...AND DON'T FORGET... Saddle Stitched Pants

Oh, my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, Well, I'll be 'a monkey's uncle!' Or, This is a 'fine kettle of fish'! We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind
We blink, and they're gone. Where have all those great phrases gone?

Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It's your nickel.. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Wake up and smell the roses.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff! ("Carter's Little Liver Pills" are gone too!)

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory.

It's one of the greatest advantages of aging.

Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth...

See ya later, alligator! After awhile crocodile

Okidoki

WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FABULOUS 50'S..

NO ONE WILL EVER HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY AGAIN...

WE WERE GIVEN ONE OF OUR MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS:

............OUR MEMORIES........

A chance to learn some new words. I like the opposite of deja vu, jamais vu. When would you ever use it in conversation? But, it is interesting to know.

What's the opposite of disgruntled? Chances are you're thinking the answer should rightly be gruntled_{but is that really a word you recognize? The problem here is that disgruntled, alongside the likes of uncouth, disheveled, distraught, inert, and intrepid, is an example of an unpaired word, namely one that looks like it should have an apparently straightforward opposite, but in practice really doesn't.
Words like these tend to come about either when a prefixed or suffixed form of a word is adopted into the language while its root is not, or when the inflected or affixed form of a word survives, while its uninflected root form falls out of use. This was the case with disgruntled, which derives from an ancient Middle English word, gruntel, meaning "to grumble" or "complain," which has long since fallen from use}although the gap left by disgruntled has led some dictionaries to list gruntled as a modern-day back-formation.

2. ANONYMOUS
Anonymous literally means "without a name." Its opposite is onymous, which is typically used to refer to books, legal papers, artworks, musical compositions, and similar documents the authorship of which is known without doubt.
3. AUTOMATON
If an automaton is a machine capable of moving itself, then the opposite is called a heteromaton<sub>a device that relies solely on external forces for movement.
4. CATASTROPHE
If a catastrophe is a sudden, unpredictable, and devastating event, then an equally sudden or unexpected event of sheer joy or good fortune is a eucatastrophe. This term was coined by Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien in 1944, who originally used it to describe a sudden or fortuitous event in the plot of a story that turns around the protagonist's chances or prospects, and brings about the resolution of the narrative.
5. DÉJÀ VU
Over the years, psychologists have identified a number of different phenomena similar to déjà vu (literally "already seen" in French). Among them is presque vu ("almost seen"), the tip-of-the-tongue feeling that you're about to remember something you've forgotten; déjà vécu ("already experienced"), a particularly intense form of déjà vu that makes it almost impossible to discern the present from the past; and déjà visité ("already visited"), which describes a person's surprising foreknowledge of a place they've never actually been to before</sub>like unthinkingly knowing your way around a foreign town or city while on holiday. The opposite of déjà vu, however, is usually said to be jamais vu ("never seen"): so if déjà vudescribes the eerie sensation that something new has actually taken place before, in the case of jamais vu a person believes that a situation that is actually very familiar and has happened before is entirely new.
7. EUPHEMISM
If a euphemism involves the use of a politer word or phrase in place of a more distasteful or objectionable one, a dysphemism is the deliberate use of an impolite or unpleasant term in place of a perfectly inoffensive one. Dysphemism is often used for rhetorical effect, in order to shock or shake up an audience, or simply for comic effect.
10. POSTPONE
To bring a date forward in time rather than postponing it is to prepone it.

See the full list at the source: 11 Words and Phrases You Didn't Know Had Opposites | Mental Floss

My Mom forwarded this to me in email: 

Heteronyms... Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning. A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym. You think English is easy? I think a retired English teacher was bored...THIS IS GREAT! Read all the way to the end... This took a lot of work to put together!

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the base of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes..
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong for me to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France .. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible..

PS. - Why doesn't Buick'; rhyme with quick'?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP'. It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special..

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.......it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.

Where did the idea of a thinking cap first come from? Someone had to start that idea.

As it turns out the origin of thinking cap was actually considering cap and that has been lost.

Lost, because people don't use it and lost because it's own origins are too far back to be remembered. Considering cap does seem older, which I like. It also describes the idea better. Considering things, rather than just thinking in general.

A 'thinking cap' was previously known by the appealing name a 'considering cap'. That term has gone entirely out of use now but was known since at least the early 17th century, as in this example from Robert Armin in Foole upon foole, 1605:

"The Cobler puts off his considering cap, why sir, sayes he, I sent them home but now."

via - The Phrase Finder

So, what does a considering cap look like? Is it decorative or plain? What gadgets and gizmos are on it? Does smoke come out of it if/ when it gets going or has been used too long? Is it heavy, shiny, red...?

Most people who keep a diary/ journal write with an audience in mind. They write to someone, even if they don't ever plan to let anyone else read what they have written.

Try writing a diary entry about your day, or pick an average sort of day to write about. Choose who your audience is. As you write change your audience to someone else about midway through. How does this change what you write and how you are writing it?

Found on Wikipedia :

Escribitionist – a term for a person who keeps a diary or journal via electronic means, and in particular, publishes their entries on the World Wide Web.