83 Old Slang Phrases We Should Bring Back

History is full of fun, fascinating old school slang terms that are well overdue for a comeback. Here are 83 words you’ll want to start using, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube.

A wet sock is a limp handshake or, in Australia, a dull person.

Happy cabbage is a sizable amount of money to be spent on self-satisfying things. 

Pang-Wangle is to live or go along cheerfully in spite of minor misfortunes. 

In the ketchup means “in the red” or “operating at a deficit.”

Flub the dub means “to evade one’s duty.”

A pine overcoat is a coffin.

A butter and egg man has nothing to do with breakfast preferences. The term, according to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, refers to a wealthy but unsophisticated small-town businessman who acts like a playboy when he visits the big city.

A zib is a nincompoop.

To give someone the wind is to jilt a suitor.

The 1909 book Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English Slang and Phrase captured some great phrases: For instance, they called sausages bags o’ mystery. 

Cop a mouse was a Victorian-era phrase that meant “get a black eye.” As Passing English explains, “Cop in this sense is to catch or suffer, while the colour of the obligation at its worst suggests the colour and size of the innocent animal named.”

Don’t sell me a dog was a fancy way of saying “Don’t lie to me.”

A door-knocker was a type of beard, “shaved leaving hair under the chin, and upon each side of the mouth forming with moustache something like a door-knocker.” 

A bald head was called a fly rink.

A gigglemug referred to a person who was always smiling. 

A nose bagger is “someone who takes a day trip to the beach. He brings his own provisions and doesn’t contribute at all to the resort he’s visiting.”

If something or someone was not up to dick, it was not healthy.

Take the egg means “to win.” 

Inferior singers.

A rain napper was an umbrella.

Your mouth was your sauce box.

Here’s a multi-purpose bit of slang, according to the 1967 Dictionary of American Slang: Pretzel-bender can mean a peculiar person, a player of the French horn, a wrestler, or a heavy drinker. 

So what happens when a pretzel-bender drinks too much? That’s when you’d need to use some old slang terms for being drunk. Like having your flag out, or being soapy-eyed, full as a tick, seeing snakes, canned up, zozzled, owled, striped, squiffed, or swacked.

People needed a lot of ways to describe excessive heat in the days before air conditioning. One phrase was hotter than Dutch love in harvest. 

You might also hear the bear got him (the bear, in this case, was heatstroke) and full of moist.

A regional term from the south for anything hot.

Give a body the flesh creep—a.k.a. the shivers—can be used when it’s cold outside.

More very colorful ways to refer to the cold.

Nineteenth-century Australians had some phrases we may want to adopt—like to have one’s shirt out, which means “to be angry.”

Two ways 19th-century Australians could describe someone who was acting a little bonkers. 

To hump the swag means “to carry your luggage on your back.”

Happy returns describes vomiting, despite those returns being less than happy.

Someone who is tipsy could be called a leanaway.

This piece of beatnik slang means “corny.”

Red onion is another name for a dive bar.

To focus your audio means “to listen carefully.”

In beatnik speak, someone who’s claws sharp is well informed on a variety of topics. 

But if you know too much, particularly of the kind of information that could lead you to ratting someone out, you might have bright disease—often fatal, at least in the mafia.

There are actually a lot of old school ways to call someone a rat, like blobber, cabbage hat, pigeon, viper, and telegram.

There are also, of course, many interesting words for anatomy. For me, there are a master john goodfellow, gentleman usher, the staff of life, the Cyprian scepter, and the maypole, among many others.

And for women, there are the Phoenix nest, the Netherlands, Mount Pleasant, and Mrs. Fubbs’ Parlor.

Bring these things together and, at least according to the 1811 version of Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, you get amorous congress, basket making, blanket hornpipe, or convivial society.

And if you were caught cheating on your significant other a century ago, you could be accused of carrying tackle, being on a left-handed honeymoon, or in Shakespeare’s time, groping for trout in a peculiar river.

Let’s talk food slang: Cluck and grunt referred to ham and egg. 

Eggs on toast.

Hot dogs with sauerkraut.

French fries.

Frank and beans.

Any kind of meat served rare.

Two cups of coffee.

All ways of saying water.

George Eddy is a customer who doesn’t tip well. 

Additional Sources: The Dictionary of American Slang; Dictionary of American Regional English; Passing English of the Victorian Era, Straight From the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang; 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue; Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia and of Some Mixed Languages; Dictionary of the Underworld; Jonathon Green’s Dictionary of Slang