12 Words Floridians Used in the 1970s That Make No Sense Today

Long before texting shrank American slang into acronyms, Floridians spent the 1970s talking with words nobody used to have to define.

Many of them didn’t last.

These are the words Floridians used throughout the 1970s that sound like a different language to Americans today.

1. Groovy

Groovy meant excellent, first-rate, exactly what you wanted, and Floridians leaned on it constantly at the start of the decade.

It didn’t age well. A 1971 newspaper was already mocking the word as something soft-drink commercials and suburban boutique ads used, a sign it had gone from cool to cliché in under five years.

That’s a fast fall.

2. Dyn-o-mite

Dyn-o-mite wasn’t a word so much as an outburst, and people shouted it after anything great, copying a catchphrase from the sitcom Good Times.

The show’s producer hated the line and tried to cut it before it ever aired.

It aired anyway, on a show that ran from 1974 to 1979, and outlived the producer’s objections by decades.

The catchphrase won.

3. Keep on Truckin’

Keep on truckin’ was the phrase people used to tell someone to stay the course no matter what stood in the way.

People printed it on bumper stickers and lunch boxes without knowing where it came from. The phrase started as a 1968 comic strip, years before many people who repeated it ever saw the original drawing.

Nobody credited the cartoonist.

4. Breaker, Breaker

Breaker, breaker was how drivers broke into a busy citizens band (CB) radio channel to talk.

Households that had never owned a radio scanner suddenly had one bolted under the dash. Truckers coined the phrase, but the whole country picked it up once CB radios became a household item.

Kids used it on toy walkie-talkies.

Even without cars.

5. Far Out

Far out worked for anything that impressed you, a concert, a sunset, a rumor, and people used it as both a compliment and a filler word.

It doubled as an all-purpose reaction to anything from a new song to a good parking spot.

Say it to a teenager today and you’ll get a blank stare, or a question about astronomy.

Not a compliment anymore.

6. Boogie

Boogie meant a fast, loose kind of dance that filled roller rinks once disco took over the back half of the decade.

It also meant leave in a hurry, and only context told you which one someone meant.

Both uses have faded.

7. Heavy

Heavy described a serious situation or a profound conversation, nothing about actual weight, and folks used it to describe everything from a breakup to the evening news.

It had nothing to do with pounds, and everything to do with mood.

Use it that way now and someone will ask what you’re lifting.

Words age strangely.

8. Bread

Bread meant money, plain and simple, and it showed up in Florida diners and record shops in the same breath as an actual grocery list.

It came from an older slang term for money that never fully went away.

A cashier asking for your bread meant something different than it does today.

Money talks, apparently.

9. Threads

Threads meant clothes, especially clothes worth noticing, and complimenting someone’s threads was a compliment on a Florida street in 1975.

The word survives only in a handful of tailor shop signs now.

Everywhere else, gone.

10. Foxy

Foxy described someone attractive, and it showed up in radio hits often enough that the word barely needed explaining at the time.

Radio DJs used it on air often enough that nobody blinked.

Call someone foxy today and half the room reaches for their phone to look it up.

Times changed fast.

11. Dig It

Dig it meant understand or appreciate, and speakers used it to check whether a listener was following along or enjoying something.

It had nothing to do with a shovel.

Context did all the work.

12. Copacetic

Copacetic meant fine, satisfactory, nothing to worry about, and it slipped into ordinary conversation despite nobody agreeing on where the word came from.

Nobody ever solved that mystery.