Words that are going out of fashion / usage

Shrews

EricTheWeary said:

Ooh I remember when Continental Quilts were all the rage and we didn't say Duvet. 

...and continental interference.

Whenever our telly started to go on the blink (often back in the 70's), my dad would say it's 'continental interference'.

Bloody Common Market. 

Also,

Fitted Carpets - what the hell were they before they were fitted? DIY bodged?

Lino - every kitchen had 'Lino'. 

Strip lighting in the kitchen, otherwise known as 'fluorescent lights'

Paraffin heaters - how we survived the fumes I will never know, let alone the paraffin itself. And what the fck was it anyway?

Not a word as such, but I remember as a kid having an electric heat lamp on the wall over the bed. It used to generate a shed load of heat. I was probably 4 foot away from death every night. 

Carpet sweeper. Not sure if they still exist. They never seemed to do anything.

Vacuum cleaners were 'Hoovers'. Still hearing the word nowadays but I also hear people say 'the vacuum'.

China cabinet

Ottoman

Pelmet 

Kurtis

Shrews said:

Fitted Carpets - what the hell were they before they were fitted? DIY bodged?

Rugs. 

Kurtis

Puddock. 

Tannin

Shrews said:

EricTheWeary said:

Ooh I remember when Continental Quilts were all the rage and we didn't say Duvet. 

Fitted Carpets - what the hell were they before they were fitted? DIY bodged?

Paraffin heaters - how we survived the fumes I will never know, let alone the paraffin itself. And what the fck was it anyway?

"Duvet" is very, very British. I have never, ever heard anyone say it except for the British. Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, Canadians ... "quilt" or sometimes "doona", never "duvet". "Duvet" always sounds like something you clean the dunny with to me, or possibly deposit in it.

"Fitted carpets" - I imagine that this goes back to the common practice of installing carpets in the centre of each room with a strip of naked floorboard surrounding it. Carpet covered the main part of the room, so you got all the practical benefits, but it didn't quite reach the walls so it was easier to cut and lay, and easier to keep clean. "Wall to wall" carpet came in gradually to replace it, say from around about the 1950s on.

"Paraffin" is simply a British name for kerosene. New Zealanders used to use it a bit too, though I doubt any would today. Similarly, "petrol" means exactly the same as what the Americans (and pretty much nobody else) call "gas" (which has to be one of the stupidest terms ever invented). As for the more specialised and less common petroleum products - things you buy in half-litre or 1-litre bottles as cleaning agents, to fuel camping stoves and lanterns, clean paint brushes, and various other uses .... don't even think about it! Every different English-speaking country uses terms like "white spirit", "metho", "methylated spirits", and "turpentine", not to mention several others, to mean completely different things. Don't go there!

Kurtis

Tannin said:

Shrews said:

EricTheWeary said:

Ooh I remember when Continental Quilts were all the rage and we didn't say Duvet. 

Fitted Carpets - what the hell were they before they were fitted? DIY bodged?

Paraffin heaters - how we survived the fumes I will never know, let alone the paraffin itself. And what the fck was it anyway?

"Duvet" is very, very British. I have never, ever heard anyone say it except for the British. Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, Canadians ... "quilt" or sometimes "doona", never "duvet". "Duvet" always sounds like something you clean the dunny with to me, or possibly deposit in it.

"Fitted carpets" - I imagine that this goes back to the common practice of installing carpets in the centre of each room with a strip of naked floorboard surrounding it. Carpet covered the main part of the room, so you got all the practical benefits, but it didn't quite reach the walls so it was easier to cut and lay, and easier to keep clean. "Wall to wall" carpet came in gradually to replace it, say from around about the 1950s on.

"Paraffin" is simply a British name for kerosene. New Zealanders used to use it a bit too, though I doubt any would today. Similarly, "petrol" means exactly the same as what the Americans (and pretty much nobody else) call "gas" (which has to be one of the stupidest terms ever invented). As for the more specialised and less common petroleum products - things you buy in half-litre or 1-litre bottles as cleaning agents, to fuel camping stoves and lanterns, clean paint brushes, and various other uses .... don't even think about it! Every different English-speaking country uses terms like "white spirit", "metho", "methylated spirits", and "turpentine", not to mention several others, to mean completely different things. Don't go there!

Gas is short for gasoline. 

Carpets and rugs are/were basically the same thing. Fitted would just mean fixed/made permanent in place of other types of flooring. Part of the interior of the house. 
Probably became popular with vacuum cleaners as you wouldn't need to take them outside to clean. 

Duvet sounds a bit French to me. 

Timcito

Kurtis said:

Tannin said:

Shrews said:

EricTheWeary said:

Ooh I remember when Continental Quilts were all the rage and we didn't say Duvet. 

Fitted Carpets - what the hell were they before they were fitted? DIY bodged?

Paraffin heaters - how we survived the fumes I will never know, let alone the paraffin itself. And what the fck was it anyway?

"Duvet" is very, very British. I have never, ever heard anyone say it except for the British. Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, Canadians ... "quilt" or sometimes "doona", never "duvet". "Duvet" always sounds like something you clean the dunny with to me, or possibly deposit in it. ...

...
Duvet sounds a bit French to me. 

Decent, god-fearing English people in the 1970s did not say 'duvet'; they said 'continental quilt.' The things, after all, were foreign and subversively sensible. Whoever heard of acquiring all the warmth necessary to keep you warm in bed from a single cover? Law-abiding British citizens slept between two sheets and then piled on an assortment of blankets which ended up in an impossible mess in the morning so that re-making the bed required time and effort. This ritual was right and proper and bespoke tradition and good character. And although we did eventually bow down to this decadent alternative, this invasion of foreign efficiency, damned if we were going to go the whole hog and use a poncey foreign word to describe it! It was a 'continental' quilt, meaning from 'somewhere over there,' where people stank of garlic, waved their arms about, and went to the toilet using holes in the ground.

I first came across the word 'duvet,' from my girlfriend, who had aspirations to poshness. She'd been 'over there' and had decided they had a certain je ne sais quoi that we and especially I were sorely lacking. She also put 'mayonnaise' (Hellman's if you please!) on her plate beside the salad instead of squirting salad cream all over it, as I was wont to do (before I met her!).

Emp_Fab

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