Women In The 1940s

Directions: Match the meaning in the right column to the correct slang term in the left column. You must complete a minimum of 10 choices. Each additional correct match earns one extra credit point.

The 1920’s was a great and important decade for the United States. After World War I, the United States went through events and changes that, overall, made the United States a much better place to live. New advances in technology and industry improved American life in more ways than just one. Americans had better wages during this time, more leisure time, and overall, had a better life than ever before. In addition, the 1920’s advocated social and cultural change as well. During this time period, the United States did not return to Normalcy, and instead developed attitudes that changed the life of the people of the United States forever thanks to social changes, cultural changes and changes in technology.

Companies that were going bankrupt months before were now literally begging for labourers and some even suffered from a shortage of workers. This was mainly due to the rapid production levels the country needed to produce military equipment including ammunition and vehicles etc. A short time after the U.S. declaration of war, the unemployment rate dropped a massive ten per cent from its previous amount. After taxes, business profits almost doubled and industrial output increased massively at 96 per cent. Government expenditure also sored dramatically to 53 per cent of GDP at its peak in 1945, in comparison to around 20 per cent of GDP previous to the war. This contributed to business recovery and gave companies the kick start they needed. Due to productivity doubling, consumer goods also expanded. The war consumed one third of industrial output and this ensured a constant supply of goods, the U.S being the only country with a significant rise in supply despite rationing. Wages also rose 50 per cent higher by 1944, this was a combination of over-time pay and wage increases etc.

Kory STAMPER is a lexicographer and editor for the Merriam-Webster dictionaries, and in her first book, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, which was released in March 2017, she documents the difficulties she faces as a lexicographer. In this article, the author tracks how the slang words “swag”, “fubar” and “bae” have changed over time.

     While the onset of war led to a hugely inflated military production capacity, American industry never completed reversion back to the pre-war focus on purely civilian items. In fact, the value of military production facilities increased by 3300% between 1939 and 1944, and less than a third of all plants created during the war were converted to civilian production (Walton 551). Paul Koistinen writes,

Sometimes it may be appropriate to use slang with your peers but in normal working with colleagues or service users you should avoid using any language that can be misunderstood or misinterpreted or that might cause offence.

Millennials are known for coming up with slang words, that they frequently use, eventually get tired

The 1920’s was an era of dramatic political and cultural change, where many Americans lived in cities rather than farms. Many inventors came to be noticed as new cars were invented and as music entered the entertainment industry. A new style of music was invented mainly in the African American community, creating the Harlem Renaissance; which was an evolution of music and entertainment in Harlem, New York City. The women of America began to evolve in the 1920s, adding new styles to our fashion industry and changing the way women dress, act, and are portrayed in society for generations. Women were viewed before the 1920’s as innocent housewives, that made little to no money, as they often relied on their husbands’ for income. Women also had little to no rights, such as voting rights, which many women began to protest. Women of the 1920’s through the 1930’s influenced and impacted society by transforming their looks from innocent housewives to a sexually liberated generation of women, increasing the working rate to twenty-five percent by working in factories and the telemarketing business, and participating in the Women’s Suffrage Movement in which they protested for their rights which then influenced the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

In most period shows, slang is a way to connect it to the time period and show how people talked then. “The script is relatively devoid of period slang, and it lacks any references to pop culture, political figures, or ‘current events’ that might set the action around 1970”(57) Shows like Rent and Hairspray that use period slang or can be set around a certain time because of it. Company does its best to not put any slang into the show so that it can always be considered in the present like the time and place say in the script. The closest thing to slang that is in the show is when, “Harry offers Robert a Bourbon. Given the decline of ‘brown’ liquors since 1970, it’s more likely that today he’d be offered a beer or wine”(57) However, brown liquors are still around and still widely

The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. Women began to take on a variety of different roles after the first world war, both in the home and in the workplace. The number of working women increased by 25 percent. Many women wanted to show that they could do the job just as well as men. Their war experiences gave many the desire for more working opportunities. Women had also been given the right to vote in 1920. These new found economic and political freedoms led to more liberated ideas about sex, appearance, and consumerism.

When the war in Europe intensified, American manufacturers started to gear up for the manufacture of war materials. Manufactures created jobs for men but ignored women. It wasn’t after Pearl Harbor and America’s full involvement in the

One new saying that was used in the show, they quickly could be heard around the US being used by people in similar scenarios. Some examples of these sayings include, “Yada Yada”, “Giddy up”, or “Man-Hands” (25 contributions to the English language) which all had new meanings because of the show and the comedy the writers created around those few simple words. Quickly, sayings started to be heard around the world, as people using the sayings were proud to show off they were a Seinfeld fan, which often sparked interest from anyone around them. This created a tight-knit fan base who was changing parts of the English language without even knowing it. Nowadays, sayings like these that stemmed from the show have been passed on, accepted, and understood by the majority of the public. I myself have used some of the sayings I saw from reading the article by Max Gross. With the technology of today, the younger generation has new slang they use every week and it often fades out and is replaced by something new; Seinfeld was different. Seinfeld was able to change the face of culture at its most basic level,

In this Video “Do Elders know Modern Slang?” The Elders reaction to learning the slang is as normal as you would think it to be, as if you just heard someone speech Spanish, but you the only word in Spanish that you know is “Hola”. The Elders act the same way with the slang words. For example The Elders understood The Netflix part of “Netflix and Chill”, but didn’t understand “The Chill” part. They thought it meant to just hangout or maybe watch a movies, not what it actually means which is to “Hook up”. The Elders didn’t understand that the slang is used in both types of ways, good or bad just depending on what type of slang word you are using or how you are using it in a sentence.

And that some word that where in the past are almost obsolete.

The movie The Breakfast Club teems with vernacular that adds value its descriptive language. Much of the vernacular, like The Catcher in the Rye, is used according to the time period the pieces were released. A prime example of vernacular is when Bender imitated his father saying, “Stupid, worthless, no good, goddamn, freeloading son of a bitch. Retarded, big mouth, know-it-all, asshole, jerk” (Hughes, 1985). Other pieces of vernacular include babbling, hot beef injection, totaled, nads,