Nearly every morning when I was four or so, my mother would send me upstairs to wake my father, and he would sing in a hungover gravelly voice “Minnie the Moocher.”
Last weekend I sang a few lines to my Swedish son-in-law, including “She had a ro-mance with the King Sweden/ Who gave her things that she was needin’.” I won’t repeat what he said about another King of Sweden.
See all the correct lyrics here.
Anyway, I was pondering the phrase “she was the roughest, toughest frail” when I happened upon a radio talk show on how we date ourselves if we use older terms: if we say “blouse” instead of “shirt” or “slacks” instead of “pants.” The radio host made a big deal of young people who don’t know that a “churchkey” opens bottles, for example.
Photo of a “churchkey”: Wikipedia.com
Churchkey is a fun term, but older terms from my father are even more fun. Do you know “infradig,” for example? Other words he used will come to me later, and I’ll update.
Meanwhile, what is a “frail,” rough and tough or otherwise? The Slang Dictionary provides the usage in a sentence:
“n. a girl; a woman. (Underworld. frail frame = dame. Detective novels and movies): ‘I’ll shoot the frail if you don’t hand it over!’ Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions, by Richard A. Spears. Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
By the way, almost any song from the musical Guys and Dolls will give you a flavor of the period I’m talking about.
And here’s Cab Calloway, who made Minnie famous.
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