Say goodbye to the decade with no name

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/19/2009 03:26 AM, Seán Fitzpatrick wrote:
>Oh, yeah.  I forgot about Brel Volksmund.

He was quite popular in his time.

>But seriously, except for the "Roaring Twenties", no decadal epithet will
>get you accused of cliché/standard usage.

Even the "swinging sixties"??  201,000 Google
hits, and authoriry from Wikipedia's article
"1960s".  And have a little fun with "flashing
seventies" and "banging eighties" (including one
instance in Dutch).  Google gives one instance of
"whimpering nineties":  "In these the whimpering
nineties, eroding economic opportunity, crime and
moral muddle, the specter of uncanny disease, and
creeping ecological disaster have become the new
obsessions."  Perhaps taken from Brel.

Joel

>Seán Fitzpatrick
>No oil for pacifists!
>http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Joel S. Berson [mailto:Berson at ATT.NET]
>Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 9:33 AM
>Subject: Re: Say goodbye to the decade with no name
>
>At 12/18/2009 01:26 AM, Seán Fitzpatrick wrote:
> >True but not too relevant.  MOST of the years 2011-2020 (or vulgarly
> >2010-2019) *are*  teens.
> >Not that it matters.  Except for the "Roaring Twenties", and the obvious
> >"'teens" and "oughts" (cf. Fibber McGee's "19 ought 10"), decades are not
> >named in the Volksmund.
>
>Except by Brel?
>
>The Twenties roar
>The Thirties scream
>The Forties burn
>The Fifties zing
>The Sixties swing
>The Seventies flash
>The Eighties bang
>The Nineties whimper
>(and the century hangs)
>
>Joel

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