It would sound terribly old fashioned to call a ladies man a "masher" or a "sheik". And if you call someone a "square", you are showing your age. Some slang terms, though heavily used for a good long run, but then pass out of use.

But others seem to persist. For example, I suspect that our oldest and our youngest posters (jerry and blues, I think?) would use the same word for the situation Richard noted:

quote:

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When I was a teenager and was spending a substantial amount of my time in trying to persuade teenage girls to share my bed (or probably the back seat of my car) we had a name for those girls who promised a great deal but delivered less than expected. And it was not "Sphallolalia"!

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jerry, blues, was/is that the slang term used within your age group?¹

I'm musing over what factors make a particular slang term persist over the generations.
Any thoughts?

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¹Rather than state it, I'll delicately note where the term appears in a reputable on-line dictionary. PS: the variant beginning with "c" was, in my day, far more prevalent than that starting with "p".

P-- T--- was the phrase I knew, though I never met one.

Does FM mean anything in the US?

My! The world has changed - or maybe it's just different in Cambridge!

Richard English

>> Does FM mean anything in the US?

Not to my knowledge, unless it's a typing-transposition for MF.

The things you learn on this board!

Is FM an abbreviation for something? I've never heard of it.

In the U.S. women hear C---T----

While not quite on point, but still related, one of my absolutely favorite plays is Lysistrata.

Back in the 70's or 80's, there was a hit song entitled "FM (No Static At All)" which dealt with just the sort of music guaranteed to put a woman into a romantic (pardon the euphemism) mood. Exactly the sexual magic wand us horny male teenagers were looking for, right?

"FM, no static at all" was a way of saying "f**k music, she won't put up a fight" in a way that was acceptable to the powers-that-be in the radio industry.

Somehow I doubt this is what you are referring to.

Far more interesting than my humdrum usage. The thought of ladies turned on by Steely Dan makes me long for the 70s.

So what does FM mean over there?
Foreign Minister?
Family Medicine?
Flying Monkeys?? (The acronym generator actually lists this one before "foreign minister" which I find odd.)

There is a related acronym "LBFM" which has two meanings that I am familiar with. One is "Lost Batallion Field Marshall" and the other is... Well, let's put that in the form of another open question to the group:

Anyone out there with any experience with LBFMs that they'd care to fess up to? The acronym generator spits out (pun intended) "Lite Beer from Miller" but that's not the answer. (Like my doobie poll, a response of total silence may mean you either don't know the term or do know it and hesitate to divulge just how.)

A hint: Far more men than women know this term and the vast majority of those individuals are now or have been in the military. Another hint: If I am specifically requested not to reveal the answer in order to save someone's marriage, I'll keep a zipped lip.


Heh, heh, heh!

Over here it means "Frequency Modulation". This is a method of radio wave transmission in which the frequency of the wave is modulated (varied) by the signal being carried rather than its amplitude as was the case with the original system.

Amplitude Modulation (AM) is more subject to interference than is FM and has thus become less common as quality has become more important. However, AM has a greater range than FM, which is why it is still often used for longer distance transmissions.

I know of no salacious meaning for the acronym FM in the UK. I do know, though, that the acronym finder I use lists its meanings in alphabetical order which would explain why "Flying Monkeys" comes before "Foreign Minister".

Richard English

Yep, I just rechecked and you're exactly correct.

The last acronym generator I used listed its answers in the order that they were used with the most frequently used at the head of the list. My mistake.

quote:

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It would sound terribly old fashioned to call a ladies man a "masher" or a "sheik".

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I'm sorry it has taken me so long to answer this one. (This has been the week from...oh, you know! )

I am not familiar with using the word "sheik" with a negative conotation. The only time I have come across it is in chatting with an acquaintance from Pakistan who is a Sheik and uses it as his title.

I think the term "sheik" dates from around the 1920s. Rudolph Valentino set female hearts a-flutter around the world playing the title role in the 1921 film The Sheik.

His style became the archetype for male sex appeal in the 1920s, and so "ladies men" became known as "sheiks" for a while.