Sixties lingo

[GoogaMooga]

***SIXTIES LINGO***

Do you speak sixties? No other decade gave us so many lasting slang words. The tumultuous 60s decade has a lot to answer for, but one lasting legacy has been a whole different mindset and a new vocabulary to define the trends of the counterculture and the new set of values of the "baby-boomers" (1963).

Now, you too can test yourself. Whether you were born in the 1960s, came of age in the 60s, or just pine for the past, the sixties are here to stay, the greatest decade for pop culture the world has ever seen!

G'wan, don't be shy now:

in (1960) - if you were in with the "in crowd", you were definitely cool, antonym was "out"...

Further exploration:

fab (1961)
knock-out (1966)
grotty (1964)
grody (1969)
naff (1966)
mods (1960)
rockers (1963)
skinheads (1969)
aggro (1969)
bovver (1969)
the twist (1961)
bossa nova (1962)
watusi (1964)
ska (1964)
acid rock (1966)
Merseybeat (1963)
Beatlemania (1963)
easy listening (1965)
popsters (1963)
groupies (1966)
teeny-boppers (1966)
miniskirt (1962)
midis (1969)
maxi-skirt (1966)
Chelsea boots (1962)
kinky boots (1964) - God save the Kinks! ❤
flares (1964)
poppers (1967)
tabs (1961)
speed (1967)
acid (1965)
skag (1967)
uppers (1968)
downers (1966)
Valium (1961)
doves (1962)
hawks (1962)
peaceniks (1962)

[Charlie O.]

"The 'Me' Decade" was the '70s!

And I'm not sure Valium really counts as lingo.

[GoogaMooga]

"The 'Me' Decade" was the '70s!

And I'm not sure Valium really counts as lingo.

What sort of decade would you call the 60s, then? Valium would count if it were used as a generic term, the way all motorcyles were called a "Honda" in Nigeria in the 1960s.

[GoogaMooga]

I've corrected the op and struck the "me decade".

[robertff]

I recognise well over 85% of those, if not more, but then I know I'm a baby boomer.


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[C]

Surely the terms 'freak out' and 'idiot dancing' should be in there somewhere...!

The former 1966...?

The latter probably 1969...?

They are terms I definitely used back in the day and still do..!




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[GoogaMooga]

Idiot dancing could only have happened in the late sixties when the hippies cut loose. No steps to memorize, no skill, hardly even a sense of rhythm is required, just jumping around with flailing arms.

[Charlie O.]

I can't say for sure when it came in, but 1966 seems early for "acid rock". "Psychedelic" certainly caught on that year (though the word was coined long before).

[robertff]

Some others I remember in common parlance among the cool kids for a while:


ream
gear
nice
phenomenal


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[Rayge]

Speaking as someone who was a teenager in the Sixties and later worked on the compilation of slang dictionaries (the majority of the terms in the post are neologisms, not slang), I'd say the OP is contentious at best, maybe downright specious.
And 'the greatest decade for pop culture' - a nonsense statement if ever I heard one.

[C]

Idiot dancing [...] no skill

Debatable Googs - you should have seen me and my mates go....!




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[C]

"pseud" - late 60s

[Pseud's Corner - Private Eye]




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[C]

Speaking as someone who was a teenager in the Sixties and later worked on the compilation of slang dictionaries (the majority of the terms in the post are neologisms, not slang), I'd say the OP is contentious at best, maybe downright specious.
And 'the greatest decade for pop culture' - a nonsense statement if ever I heard one.

Please translate lad

Yes, please translate




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[Rayge]

Speaking as someone who was a teenager in the Sixties and later worked on the compilation of slang dictionaries (the majority of the terms in the post are neologisms, not slang), I'd say the OP is contentious at best, maybe downright specious.
And 'the greatest decade for pop culture' - a nonsense statement if ever I heard one.

Please translate lad

Yes, please translate.

I wuz hip kid in 60s and in 80s worked on books of slang words by my mate Tony Thorne so know my STUFF, like a lot of the 'new' words aren't slang. First post says as fact some dodgy things that are a try-on. Mebbe he's having a larf, or mebbe just full of it.

[GoogaMooga]

Speaking as someone who was a teenager in the Sixties and later worked on the compilation of slang dictionaries (the majority of the terms in the post are neologisms, not slang), I'd say the OP is contentious at best, maybe downright specious.
And 'the greatest decade for pop culture' - a nonsense statement if ever I heard one.

This list is drawn from a longer list by the OED, so if that is contentious, I frankly don't care. Greatest decade for pop culture? Whole books have been written about 1966.

[GoogaMooga]

I'd say the OED has come up with a list of both neologisms and slang, the latter of which are neologisms, too - in a way. I should have elaborated.

[John aka Spock aka Josh]

What a groovy list, man, it's far out babee!

[GoogaMooga]

What a groovy list, man, it's far out babee!

[Rayge]

Speaking as someone who was a teenager in the Sixties and later worked on the compilation of slang dictionaries (the majority of the terms in the post are neologisms, not slang), I'd say the OP is contentious at best, maybe downright specious.
And 'the greatest decade for pop culture' - a nonsense statement if ever I heard one.

This list is drawn from a longer list by the OED, so if that is contentious, I frankly don't care. Greatest decade for pop culture? Whole books have been written about 1966.

And indeed many other years, and they continue to be so.
The nonsense lies in the facts that history cannot be split up into arbitrary ten-year chunks and evaluated against one another and that the terms employed are so vague - what is included in pop culture? What is the geographical context - whole world? the west? who's in the west? What makes pop cuture 'great' - according to what criteria and whose evaluations?
It's just another example of Golden Age thinking. Bollocks, basically.

[GoogaMooga]

Nevertheless an awful lot of books and articles have been written about decades and eras. Probably too many. That subject seems inexhaustible. Most people know it doesn't fall into neat decades, like 1960-1970, but you will find as you get into a decade, a certain zeitgeist takes form. Many say the 1960s got going in 1963 and petered out in 73, with the oil crisis. You may find such exercises futile and that is fine. I think they add to our sense of history.