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A while back, John Taylor of Greensboro suggested that I write something about expressions you used to hear every day but seldom hear anymore.

It got me to thinking: Each generation has its own pet expressions that preceding generations think are juvenile and succeeding generations will think are old hat (to use a hackneyed term).

Some expressions are enduring. "Cool" has been a universal expression of approval for as long as I can remember. "Hip" has had a long run in hip jargon. Teenagers have been "digging" cool stuff for a long time.

In today's talk, "I'm like" has become a common substitute for "I said," and it's an expression I won't be caught using. I'm like a lot of people in my generation: We regard it as linguistic degradation.

The use of "24-7," meaning 24 hours a day and seven days a week, may outlive the generation that gave birth to it. It's a handy expression, but I'm partial to "round-the-clock," which says essentially the same thing but is two syllables shorter when spoken. As Winston Churchill once said, "Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all."

The texting crowd is fond of "OMG," meaning "Oh my God," and you hear these words used repeatedly on TV. When contestants on "America's Got Talent" are told they're moving to the next round, they always exclaim, "Oh my God!" and this mild appeal to the Almighty is a bit off-putting to this native Bible Belter.

"PC" was in common use when I was in high school, but it didn't stand for "personal computer" as it does today. We were only vaguely aware of what a computer was -- the first Univac was delivered in 1951, and the first personal computer was decades away. PC, to my generation of teenagers, meant "privileged character" and was always used as a put-down. "How come you get excused early to go to cheerleader practice? You think you're a PC or something?"

Taylor reaches way back to the era when America -- or at least the South -- was essentially rural, and we were still using expressions that grew up on the farm.

"Priming the pump" is still used as a metaphor, especially when talking about efforts to revive a sagging economy.

Most modern Americans don't remember the days before municipal water lines reached beyond city limits. Back then, if you lived on a farm you might have to fetch water into the house by the bucket. If you were on the upscale side of rural poverty, you filled the bucket from a hand pump instead of from an open well. Often, you had to prime the pump before it would produce a flow of water. You did it by pouring a cup full of water down the pipe and pumping vigorously until the vacuum took hold and pulled water from the well into the spout.

"Playing possum" is still heard occasionally. Back when possum hunting was a common form of rural recreation (before video games transformed our leisure activities), everyone knew about the possum's peculiar practice of playing dead when danger lurked. The canny marsupial figured that nobody was going to attack a dead animal. So "playing possum" became a handy way of saying somebody was pretending to be asleep or faking helplessness to avoid unpleasant circumstances.

"Grinning like a mule eating briars" is a simile that will be effective only on those who remember the mule. That noble and intelligent animal provided the South with food and fiber for many generations and endured many hardships while serving us. It preferred corn and hay to briars, but if forced to subsist on prickly fare, it would contort its mouth into a grin to avoid the stickers.

Taylor suggests "dumb as an ox," which is an enduring metaphor, but you'd have to have personal experience with the bovine species to understand how apt it is. Cows and their male consorts aren't nearly as smart as their equine neighbors. While horses and mules understand many human words, about the only words I've known a cow to understand are "Back your leg, Bossie," a command to move her leg backward so the milker's fingers could get to her udders. Oxen never heard that command, and responded only to a whip or goad when hitched to a wagon or plow.

During the '30s and '40s, if something was really cool it was "the stuff on wheels" or "the stuff on a handle." Maybe that had something to do with the ascent of the automobile and the emergence of lollypops. I've never investigated the etymology.

"Boy and how!" was an all-purpose exclamation of satisfaction that was sometimes shortened to "Boy!" and at other times to "And how!"

"Did you dig Betty Grable in 'Pin-Up Girl'?"

"And how!"

Cartoonist Ham Fisher named Joe Palooka's girlfriend (later his wife) Anne Howe.

I could go all the way back to "the bee's knees" and "twenty-three skidoo," but that would be pushing the calendar back before my time. Speaking of which, I'm about on deadline and my editors are like, "OMG, do you think you're a PC who can dawdle around 24-7 and still get this stuff into print?"

A PC? Well, yeah. I've never tried a Mac.

Write to Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625. E-mail: Swampscum2@aol.com