donna backshall's Reviews > Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century

The first half of this book was fascinating, filling in some gaps in my knowledge and enlightening me with plenty of "I didn't know that's where it came from!" insight into different sayings. "Cake walk" was a little horrifying, while "flick" (flicker) was a fun reference to see.

But somehow around the 1960s the book sort of lost steam. The explanations seemed to assume a bit more cultural knowledge, and were not nearly as revealing or deep. Just because I may have lived through some of these decades doesn't mean I was aware of how things were happening. "Enquiring minds want to know!"

Overall Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-By-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the 20th Century is an excellent book for anyone looking to find out the why and how old lingo came into being. Some of it was purely whimsical, but here we have a firm reminder that much of that lingo carried more weight than most of those using the terms suspected.