More Family-isms

To continue the last post about strange things my family said, my Grandfather used to say “by-and-by” all the time.  He usually said this in response to us kids asking, “Grandpa, when are we going out in the boat?”  He’d say “by-and-by”.  By-and-by means “a future time or occasion”.

My Father used to call an umbrella a “bumbershoot”.  Don’t forget your bumbershoot.  According to Merriam-Webster, the origin of bumbershoot is "bumber- (alteration of umbr- in umbrella) + -shoot(alteration of -chute in parachute)". The first known use is circa 1896. Who knew? I thought it was just a weird word he made up. 

It’s interesting that my Mom (and I believe I heard my Grandmother use this word, too) would say, “Answer the telefunken”. They meant telephone. Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, according to Wikipedia. One of the products they made was telephones. 

If you were being teased by other kids, my Mother would always say, “consider the source”. To a child, that meant nothing. I had hoped for some words of wisdom or something I could use as a come-back not “another way of saying that any information received from a certain source can't be taken seriously because that source has been wrong before, or lacks credibility”. Eric tells me in similar circumstances, his Mother would say, “they’re just jealous”. That also is not particularly helpful to a child when they are being bullied!

SOURCES:  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/by-and-by

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bumbershoot

http://kyweathercenter.com/?p=3304

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefunken

http://www.howstuffworks.com/telephone.htm

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=consider%20the%20source