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Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock Hints
What do all these 1930s expressions mean?
You can look up these expressions yourself, using a dictionary or the Internet, but I'm here to save you the trouble. Some of them are a little weird, but they're no weirder than the expressions we use today.
-- bearcat: An aggressive or forceful person; someone with great energy or ability. There was also a car called a Stutz Bearcat in the 1930s.
-- Cantigny: A place in France where an important battle was fought in World War I. Emily's father was killed there.
-- cat's pajamas, cat's meow, bee's knees, and so on: The very best; the most impressive; the top of the heap.
-- the Depression: A period when a lot of people lost their jobs, crops died, and banks failed. Everyone was poor and food was scarce, and a lot of people lost their entire life savings in one day. It started in November 1929 and didn't really end in America until World War II started in the 1940's.
-- dumb Dora: A generic airhead, the subject of a long series of dumb-person jokes. (Example: A neighbor told Dumb Dora that most accidents happen within 25 miles of home, so she moved to a new town 50 miles away.)
-- horse feathers: Nonsense (since horses don't have feathers). Another fun expression with the same meaning is "Hen's teeth!"
-- hypers, hinky, cast a kitten, etc.: Just made-up words -- but what other kind are there?
-- ish kabibble: A Yiddish phrase meaning "I don't care" or "I should worry." Also a cartoon strip in the 1930s and a comic singer in the 1940s.
-- keen: neat, cool, nifty, phat -- in other words, good.
-- Moxie: A soft drink (like Coke). Later "moxie" came to mean nerve, as in, "I can't believe you had the moxie to tell that teacher to shut up."
-- party line: One telephone line shared by several households.
-- Rockefeller: One of America's richest men in the 1930's.
-- Sam Spade: The fictional hard-boiled detective featured in "The Maltese Falcon," a book written by Dashiell Hammett; later made into a very famous movie starring Humphrey Bogart.
