Old vs. New
Posted on Nov 15, 2008 at 09:13 am | Tagged as: Language, Vagaries
Why are things “old-fashioned” yet “newfangled?” You never hear about “new-fashioned” stuff or “oldfangled” items. What is “fangled,” anyway? “Yeah, we’ve been fangling stuff like this for years, but this is the newfangled way of doing it. Lotta progress in this here fangle procedure, that’s for sure.”
I’m just looking for a little consistency, that’s all.
Actually, things have been “new-fashioned” since 1575 and “oldfangled” since 1842, but those are old-fashioned terms and everyone prefers to use the newfangled ones now…
I believe that congress passed legislation in 1967 that made everything prior to 1960 “Fashioned” and everything from 1961 on “Fangled”