You know you are growing old when your hair starts thinning, your knees begin to creak and your cholesterol climbs the scale. But another sign is when your vocabulary is stocked with words that have gone out of fashion.

Galoshes, for instance. If you walk up to anyone under the age of 50 and say the word “galoshes,” they will think you have a Hungarian stew in mind. Yet, 50 years ago, galoshes were a sign of winter and were common, almost mandatory. What are they? Footwear; overshoes with buckles. As far as I know, they are gone. And so is the word from most vocabularies.

Here’s a list of some of the words that now belong mostly to fossils.

Flat 50. This may sound like a speed limit or an ironed portrait of Mackenzie King. But, back in the days of cigarettes, it was a tin that contained cigarettes for serious smokers. Yes, it was flat and, yes, it held 50 cigarettes.

Vacuum tube. I tried this one at an electronics shop and drew puzzled looks. When I explained that the radios of my youth were full of vacuum tubes, there was even more consternation. It’s possible that some of the clerks had never heard of a “radio.”

Spindle. That which, in the old days of record albums, one used to hold a stack thereof for extended play. While the verb “to record” is still going strong, that actual platter of vinyl or plastic now lives with the dinosaurs.

Operator. Yes, this word is still in use, but not in its old meaning of 40 or 50 years ago. For in those days, an operator was someone you could reach easily by phone and who was only too happy to complete your calls. And they never said, “Your call is important to us” – although it was.

Home delivery. Another word that is common but now refers mainly to pizza or Chinese food. But back in the days of the horse and wagon, it meant service. Bread and milk came to your house on a daily basis. Drugstores sent delivery boys on bicycles. Department stores even delivered small purchases rapidly and free of charge.

Spats. Nowadays, this word means a low-key fight or a simmering feud. The meaning I knew does go back a long way. Spats were linen covers that went over your shoelaces and were considered elegant. Frankly, they are long gone. But, as a child, I vaguely remember my father wearing them on formal dress occasions.

White gloves. Right, anyone handling food almost surely wears gloves of thin latex. But real white gloves go back to the era of spats and even after, when no lady would go out in the afternoon without her white gloves and a hat. And that hat might well have had a veil.

Fountain pen. I thought this was surely a goner, until I flipped through an expensive catalogue and found one at a vastly inflated price. If you are not familiar with the term, you should know that it sucked ink out of a bottle and held it in a rubber reservoir in the barrel of the pen. When you uncapped this instrument, the ink would flow and the pen would write. Frequently, in those days, this pen also would leak copiously into your shirt pocket.

Liberty. The Canadian. Weekend. The Family Herald. I could still get these into my conversation, but I can imagine they would bring puzzlement. They are the names of just some of the magazines that flourished in Canada well within memory and have now vanished. I have somewhere a beer stein celebrating the success of Weekend magazine, which had a weekly circulation of 2.5 million. No kidding.

Linotype. What the linotype did – and it seems utterly strange now – was to pour hot lead into individual letter forms and thus create type for newspapers and magazines. There was no other way to produce print. When I worked as a poorly paid reporter in Saskatchewan, I thought maybe I could become a linotype operator and make three times as much money.

Luckily, I didn’t.

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