Let us have a reckoning - pre-modern casual English

[RangerWickett]

I'm guessing most of us don't roleplay with pre-modern phrases, but that's okay, because if you watch this video, you can take away that plenty of modern phrases were also used back in the day. They just were part of a suite of options, including many which are no longer popular.

You could have asked, "What do I owe," or "Let us have a reckoning." Today you might instead pick, "What's the total?" or "How much?" or "What's your Venmo?"

Maybe in 400 years, "What do I owe" will sound dated, and it'll be much more common to ask "What's your venmo," even if that app is long dead, and venmo is just a generic term for 'online payment details'.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

People in the region I come from still use how do you in its' shortened form, howdy.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Let us have a reckoning!"

Tears off his shirt, throws a chair through a window.

 

[bloodtide]

You don't need 400 years......much less.

Plenty of kids born after 2000 use the slang term "Stan" and they have NO idea where that came from. Same way plenty of people know what "daisy dukes'' are...but have no idea why they are called that.

We don't "hang up" in the physical activity a phone any more....but we still say we do. Phones don't "ring" either...but we say they do. And you sure don't "dial" a smartphone..

And you don't "roll" down a car window any more.

You don't "tune in" Tv or radio stations.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You don't "tune in" Tv or radio stations.

This is true but no-one even says "tune in" any more as a result. There are some phrases that stay because an activity is still occurring, just changed in format like "ringing" someone or "giving them a bell", but others which go away because the activity isn't changed, it's gone.

I dunno about the US but I was reading a bunch of 1700s phrases and words and I was shocked how many of them were still in use, at least in middle/upper-middle class Received Pronunciation/Southern British-style English.

Stan is a particularly funny one not to know I have to admit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Lots of us know about Shakespeare’s reputation as a wordsmith, but according to this article, Charles Dickens was no slouch himself.

Seven Dickensian Words Coined by Charles Dickens Himself

Known for penning works such as A Christmas Carol (1843) and Oliver Twist (1838), Victorian-era writer Charles Dickens is also credited with inventing a slew of interesting words.

www.wordgenius.com

I use quite a few of those, and didn’t realize he created them. Of the neologisms that I hadn’t seen before, I really want to bring back “sassigassity”.

 

[trappedslider]

People in the region I come from still use how do you in its' shortened form, howdy.

and Texas cats go "meowdy"

 

[bloodtide]

This is true but no-one even says "tune in" any more as a result. There are some phrases that stay because an activity is still occurring, just changed in format like "ringing" someone or "giving them a bell", but others which go away because the activity isn't changed, it's gone.

I real funny one.....is not a word....it's an icon. Most software has a visual of a square object for the "save" button. Ask anyone born after 2000 ish, and they might say something like "it looks like a cheese single" and have no idea what it is and why it means "save".


Some words just get "stuck". People in my family have said "shut the front door" from the time I was a kid...and still do.

My parents called the device that keeps food cold in the kitchen, an "Ice Box"....as I do...and my kids do.

You hear "dollars to donuts" often enough.....but other ones like "nickles to navy beans" are long gone...but I'm bring it back.

"Sour Grapes" and "crying wolf" came from way back in BC. And we still use it in 2024.
"Clean Slate" is from BC too....
"Achilles' heel" is sooo old

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’m wondering how long it will take for “Sword of Damocles” to morph into “Sort of damn Oakleys”.

 

[Clint_L]

People in the region I come from still use how do you in its' shortened form, howdy.

Folks in the Americas, and in the Appalachian region in particular, have kept a lot of English words and expressions that are long gone from most regions of England. A number of our regular words sound old-timey to them, like "diaper" and "candy."

However, there's not really such a thing as "Elizabethan English." Usually when folks use that term, they are talking about stage English as written down and spoken by actors in London around that time. But England then had as many or more regional dialects as today (Shakespeare himself would have come to London with quite a thick regional accent).

Today, we tend to think that folks in England will speak a version of the language that is closest to versions spoken 400 years ago. But that's not really true. They are just as many years removed from those dialects as are folks in New England.