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"City slicker" - anyone obviously from a big city who showed up in a small, farming town. Out grandparents who lived on a farm didn't see many people from big cities but they "stood out like a sore thumb" when they did show up.
Going to see a man about a horse. They would always say that when we asked them where they were going and they felt it was none of our business to know.
Going to see a man about a horse. They would always say that when we asked them where they were going and they felt it was none of our business to know.
This has been a useful (and usefully vague) excuse for absenting oneself from company for about 150 years, though the real reason for slipping away has not always been the same. [...] From other references at the time [around 1866] there were three possibilities: 1) [the speaker] needed to visit the loo [...] 2) he was in urgent need of a restorative drink, presumed alcoholic; or 3) he had a similarly urgent need to visit his mistress.
I'm not sure what all the controversy is about the word 'stoop'. Is it just to be contrary?
If educating someone on the definition and use of a word is "contrary", so be it.
Row houses in Philly that don't have porches have stoops. That's what the people who live in those houses call the steps leading up to their front doors. Deal with it.
Another old-fashioned one: some of the old folks refer to a toilet as a "stool."
I've only hear stool used to refer to the bowel movement itself, e.g. a doctor asking "Do you have blood in your stool." I wonder if the meaning over time got transferred from the toilet to what goes into it.
"Stool" can be a 3 or 4 leg seat, a toilet (have heard it used that way occasionally) or feces. Or maybe as a "stool pigeon" - meaning a "snitch".
Last edited by Seagrape Grove; 03-16-2015 at 08:38 PM..
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