Pickles by Brian Crane for February 01, 2021

Sorry Nelson go look in a dictionary. Real words.

Neither is “whippersnapper.” Now stay off my greensward!

I honestly think some young people are dense. I asked for a dozen donuts one time at a donut shop and the teenage girl did not know how many were in a dozen. Just recently I went to a local supermarket deli and ordered 6 chicken wings and two chicken legs. These were regular roasted chicken pieces. She looked at the pan of chicken and said that she did not know what a wing looked like. I had to show her 6 wings. At least she recognized a chicken leg. Talk about being ditzy—good grief!

I love the dog’s wide-eyed stare…

Anyone else thinking that not learning synonymous vocabulary is a lost art?

Give him some slacks.

Grandpa’s trying to expand Nelson’s vocabulary (and keep his own mind sharp while he’s doing it).

I do remember the expression “Cat’s fur and Kitten Britches”!

You’ll be fine Nelson, just don’t burn your britches behind you.

I have a strong Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. When I was little, and wiggling around at church or somewhere, Mom would say,”Quit wrutching around.” I was about 11 before I learned it was not an English word.

School is not the only place were a child may learn something.

Ohhhhh! You mean ‘dungarees’, Earl.

Earl should have just gone with the law firm of Slacks, Jeans and Pants.

Roscoe speaks well with eyes & tail.

Ah, but they are real words grasshopper.

But, but, Nelson! They ARE real words…..you’re just too young to know them

Seems like MIKEYJAY might be living in a t$$$p state.

The latest Oxford Dictionary recognizes over 600,000 word forms; the average person’s working vocabulary is 1,500!

Bought a pair of pants on sale at Marshall’s a few month’s back. Took them to the counter and quipped what a great sale it was for trousers. The young man at the register asked, “What are trousers?” Might’ve been Earl’s grandson, grown up.

Earl should explain that those words all pertain to “Garments”

Call em what you want. They still go on “one leg at a time.”

I’m trying to make up my mind; is this hilarious or just sad . . . .

The schools are teaching our kids to be nice little socialists and to violently protest whenever they don’t get their way. The way this country is headed makes me sometimes wish that I had not survived my cancer.

hehe I’m writing a story set in 1710 and have to learn a new vocabulary. For instant, a boy would wear a blouse, breeches and jacket. A little boy a frock or smock. The sides of a ship are starboard and larboard.

@POOCHFAN Yeah I don’t know where that word came from but having been raised in Pa Dutch country it was a common word along with a few others that were used regularly.

I used 8 Susan B’s on a tab once & she had to ask the manager if they took those?

Notice the dog wags his tail in agreement with the kid!

I always liked “knickers” myself, but found out that they should really be called “knickerbockers” because “knickers” are used more for women’s underwear things than men’s clothing.

Breeches and Pantaloons are each different from pants/trousers and from each other.

The newest are not taught anything. Somehow lore has fallen by the wayside.

Are young people really as stupid as it appears by some of the comments here? Honestly? I think they are. Do they know know references from the past in movies, television or just the plain old spoken language? I fear they do not. I’ve been doing crossword puzzles since I could read. Between just reading and puzzles, I think it’s how I learned names of film and television personalities before my time. It’s how I learned of places all over the world. I still learn things every day from reading. Just last night I was reading a book and part of the story referenced Daphne Du Mauriers’ Frenchmans’ Creek. I knew it was in Cornwall but not much else so I had to stop and look it up. Gorgeous place! There were even pictures of the yellow house that this fictional family rented. Sometimes I think young people today are in their own little bubbles and that’s just sad.

The words today’s kids don’t know would fill a dictionary.

Unless someone takes the time to teach, no one will learn. I don’t think anyone is born knowing what a chicken wing looks like or what a “dozen” is.

Here is an accurate historical bit of research that I did on pantaloons:

PANTALOONS Another famous Chick Tale. (The truth, the half-truth, and nothing like the truth)A short time ago, I was talking with a friend about where we got the word “pants”, and why it isn’t “pant”. I had heard that the word comes from an old English word “pantaloons”. Wanting to be accurate with my information, I very carefully and painstakingly researched the derivation* of the word “pantaloons”. As always, I want to share my brilliant work with y’all.Way back in pre-history, when the Scottish folks moved to England, which was populated by no one but cave people, they found that the English cave girls thought men wearing dresses was sissified. That couldn’t be allowed for a red-blooded male, so the Scottish men all got together and had a big conference to come up with a solution. After much discussion, they decided to cut their dresses up the middle and stitch the flaps together. (They called the dresses “kilts”. That was because in battle, they sometimes got all wrapped up in them and fell down, thereby getting “kilt” by their enemies.) That was hard work, and they were all panting when they had completed the task. AND it was so hot under there that the air expanded and became lighter, so they began to float up into the air! One of the older and wiser of them exclaimed “BALLOON!” (That was the word they used which is kinda like our word “WOW!”)They then had to come up with a suitable name for the new invention. After much thoughtful deliberation, and not being able to come up with a word more descriptive, they finally decided to just put “pant” and “balloon” together, making “pant-a-balloon”. (By-the-way, that was also the first mention in history of the invention of the balloon, also named for their wow-word!)

(It cut off before I could finish. So here is the rest:) Through printing errors and not having a proper Webster’s dictionary at their disposal, the word became “pantaloon”. Then when the colonials came to America, they forgot how to spell the mother tongue and among other things, added an “s”, making it “pantaloons”. And since, as all American women will testify, American males are lazy, they shortened it to just “pants”. They actually discovered their mistake, but left it alone because when several of them got together, they ALL wore them, making the word plural. Made perfect sense to them anyway, being typical lazy American males. Besides, it was time for punkin-chunkin game to begin. *Hey—wait. Shouldn’t “derivation” be plural, “derivations”? After all, “pantaloons derived from two words, “pant” and “balloon”, therefore making it plural!

Try asking for 2/3lb of anything at the Deli — .667lbs or really screw them up and ask for 5/8lb = .625lbAnd don’t get me started on the metric system — everyone my age had to learn that when we were kids because that was how the whole world was going to weigh and measure things.

Look like cargo pants to me. Also voted out by Social Pressureists long ago.

Didn’t want to tell the kid those aren’t real britches.

Back in the day, we had to memorize the multiplication tables up to 12 times 12. The 7’s and 8’s were the hardest, but I eventually learned them because I was promised a lizard when I did. And the only reason you shouldn’t know what a dozen is, is if your family only ever buys their eggs scrambled. I am not into today’s technology (aside from my computer, which I do my own maintenance on) because it’s a crutch. If you have a machine to do it for you, you will learn how to do it on your own, and you will be the one missing out.

This started when women had to go to work and leave their newborn babies with strangers in the baby warehouse. Too exhausted to do anything but bath and bed when they got home and had to do the housework and shopping on the weekends. Kids didn’t get taught these basic living skills anymore. I know this is an unpopular opinion but if you think back on it, it’s true.

I had to scan all the comments to see if this had been addressed. Someone else came close with the term “knickers.” “Pants” also describes a different article of clothing in the UK compared to the US. I’d also argue that ‘panteloons,’ are different from ‘trousers.’

Buy him a pair of jodhpurs

Just watched a documentary on Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The narrator said he accepted Japan’s surrender on the deck of the aircraft carrier Missouri.

Poor old guy’s gone off the deep end. Dreaming up FAKE words!!

In ‘68, I was in the Marines Boot Camp, we NEVER called our pants, “pants”. They were “trousers”. Our DIs made sure we learned it.