My grandparents on both sides of the family used to refer to margarine as "oley". I didn't know why until my father explained that back when they first introduced margarine it was named "oleomargarine" or "oleo". Oleo was originally a white-ish paste and a frightened dairy lobby got a bill passed that required manufacturers to include the yellow die seperately to be mixed in by the consumer so that 1. consumers would KNOW they weren't buying real butter and 2. make it look disgusting so folks wouldn't buy it to begin with. Apparently, the law changed afterwards.
I guess my grandparents never got the memo 50 years ago that said it was supposed to be called 'margarine' (perhaps just as strange is the fact that we say 'pass the butter' at Chez Maister regardless of whether one is referring to butter or margarine).
My grandfather also used to refer to a couch as a 'davenport' and my great grandmother used to refer to the living room as the 'parlor'. Perhaps these terms are still in common usage and are simply regional variants but my initial impression is that the terms have fallen into disuse (at least in the midwest).
I wonder what archaic terms I am guilty of using thanks to changing technology and times? It occurs to me that I referred to a word file saved on a 'floppy disk' the other day. They probably don't even manufacture those 5" flexible disks anymore.
Do/did your grandparents ever use archaic vocabulary?
Other than the previous example I'm sure I never use any archaic language. Well, I'm off to send a wire to the Prussian ambassador in Siam....
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