1945 slang?

Question

i have to do an english project on 1945 radio and i wanted to see if i could put some of that times slang into it...but idk what words to use....does anyone know any slang from the 40s and if not do u know a website that would have some? Thanks : )

Answer 1

A lot of the slang during that time is in the book Catcher in the Rye (some words doesnt sound like it is slang but its was back then):

1.lousy
2.touchy
3.crumby
4.very big deal
5.dough
6.It killed me
7.flunk
8.stiff
9.madman
10.moron
11.strictly for the birds
12.hot-shot
13.kick out of it
14.crap
15.corny
16.phony
17.got the ax
18.get a bang
19.shoot the bull
20.____ as hell (as in a alot:Ex.-long as hell)
21.chucked
22.knocks me out
23.swanky
24.racket
25.made a stink
26.it stinks
27.swell
28.horse around
29.drove me crazy
30.a buzz

Email me if you need the definitions for some of them.

Here's my email: [e-mail]

Answer 2

I disagree with one thing. News reporters seldom use slang. -almost never,
-so listening to news reporters won't tell you how the Drugstore Cowboy and some Hotsy-Totsy Dame with great Gams yakked it up, when they took the ol' jalopy to some joint, you know, the local gin-mill... for some giggle water... a little hooch... so they can get totally ossified.

Anyway, I've got just what the doctor ordered, see? Even though there's no percentage in it, hold onto your hat, 'cause this is gonna be a real blockbuster:
There are quite a few of them at:
http://www.angelfire.com/comics/howardfineandhoward/20sTo40sPhrases.html
Here are the sort of things:
All Wet, "Ah applesauce!", Big Cheese, Bluenose - "the Blue Nozzle Curse.", A Broad, Bump Off, Carry a Torch, Cat's Meow, Darb, Dame, Drugstore Cowboy, Dumb Dora, Fall Guy, Flat Tire, Pill, Pickle, Drag, Rag, Oilcan, Frame, Gams, Giggle Water, Gin Mill, Hard Boiled, Heebie-Jeebies, High-Hat, Hooch, Hoofer, Horsefeathers, Hotsy-Totsy, Jalopy, Joint, Keen, Kisser, Line, Lounge Lizard, Moll, Ossified, Pinch, Pushover, Ritzy, Scram, Sheba, Sheik, Soitently, Speakeasy, Spiffy, Spread Out!, Stuck On, Swanky, Swell, Take for a Ride, Upchuck, Wise guy, Whoopee

But if you want more than that:

Ok, Mac, you've got me over a barrel, so I suppose I can cut you in for a piece of the action by giving you this address:
http://www.writersdreamtools.com/view/decades/default.asp?Decade=1940

It's strictly for writers, see, so don't be a wise guy and go spreading it around....

Another thing you might try is listening to some old Humphrey Bogart movies, the Bowery Boys or even the Three Stooges. All three used a lot of 1940's era slang.

Hmm, on the post below, "groovy" didn't come in until the 1960's and "boss" as a slang term didn't show up until the 1980's (In case you wanted to know) It is okay for a character to use an older term from say the 20's, that they might have heard when they were younger, but they would *never* have heard future terms, so be careful in that respect. The Writer's Dreamtools address I gave you is great, as it contains not only slang expressions from different eras, but also things from the headlines and other things going on in the world during that era, and goes back to like the 1650's by ten year increments.

The "Mairzy doats" song mentioned by another answer, is perfect for 1945. It came out at the end of 1943, and hit number one in May 1944, so by 1945, "everybody" knew it.

Oh, and someone mentioned the Germans and Japanese. What I recall is that they were called the Jerry and Jap or Nip.
Those are not really derogatory, just slang nicknames that came from shortened forms of the words..
German > Ger (shortened form) >Gerry > Jerry
Japanese > Jap (shortened form)
Nippon (Their name for Japan) > Nip (shortened form)

...so as you see they were not meant as "bad-words" or slurs. They were just a (shorter) slang way of saying the same names.

(Yeah, I'm old enough to remember the 1940's -How'd you guess? - grin.)

Looking down at another answer, I note that some of the terms "lousy", "horse around" and some others, have been around a lot longer than 1940's. For instance, Andy Gordon confided to his diary (now public) a hundred years earlier, July 12, 1849, his distaste toward the *current* slang term "lousy". The term "horse around" meaning doing something foolish or useless is actually from the introduction of the carousel, which was a revolving contraption used to train French noblemen in the art of knighthood during the seventeenth century (1600's). Many found it foolish as it did not give them the sence of being on a real horse, but only a wooden imitation that went around and around.

Other words like crumby/crummy have crept into the language with date unknown, and would probably be safe to use. Obviously it came from an untidy place (a lot of crumbs left on the table, floor, etc.) but when is anyone's guess. Or, likewise, "strictly for the birds" appears in J D Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye', published in 1951. Whether it is older than that, is unknown. I know I personally never heard it before the 60's, when it started being used in Hipster slang.

Answer 3

You could try the list of World War II radio shows at archive.org. You'd have to listen to all of them of course but they have news reports and interviews from that era, if you want to hear how people actually talked.

Wikipedia also has good and complete slang pages.

Answer 4

catcher in the rye, the book, is written in 1945 in the voice of a teenager; scan through it for some words. basically, crap, swell, damn....

Answer 5

that is a good idea. i don't know any, but i know that most will have to do with bad names for germans and japanese.

also, check out wikipedia and see what was going on in that year. reference your current events

Answer 6

abdabs Noun. Terror, the frights, nerves. Often heard as the screaming abdabs. Also very occasionally 'habdabs'. [1940s]

barf Verb. To vomit, probably onomatapoeic in origin. E.g."He's feeling woozy, I think he's gonna barf his dinner up." [Orig. U.S. 1940/50s]

Answer 7

Mairsydoats and dosydoats and lidellamsydivy, a kidilee divy too, wouldn't you?

mares eat oats and does eat oats
and little lambs eat ivy
a kid will eat ivy too, wouldn't you?

Answer 8

groovy,boss,things like that all mean good..