8 Words Tennesseans Used in the 1960s That Make No Sense Today
If you ever told someone “you bet your sweet bippy,” you weren’t born after the 1970s.
Tennesseans who grew up in the ’60s used words like that every day. Try them on your grandkids and watch their faces.
Here are the words Tennesseans used in the 1960s that make no sense today.
1. Ginchy
If you called someone ginchy in the early 1960s, you meant they were attractive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang cites an American song from 1959 and an American book from 1961.
In that book, Rockabilly, a group soon becomes known as the Ginchy Set.
The British paper Mersey Beat printed the superlative ginchiest in 1961.
2. Ring-a-Ding
American citations for ring-a-ding date to 1960, in a work by Lord Buckley, and 1962, in Mad magazine.
Green’s defines the adjective as perfect or ideal.
The Lord Buckley citation compares a happy person to a ring a ding bird in a ding dong tree.
The Mad citation mentions Frank Sinatra and a ring-a-ding home movie.
What the Dates on These 1960s Words Mean
Merriam-Webster’s date for a word is the earliest written evidence the dictionary has found.
A word can be older than its date, since many words were in spoken use for decades before they reached print.
So a year in this list means the word was in print by then, and people may have used it earlier.
Green’s lists dated citations from books, newspapers and magazines, so a year there marks a print use it found.
3. Wiggy
Wiggy had two different meanings in the 1960s.
Green’s cites an American magazine from 1964, quoted in a 1967 book, for the sense of eccentric.
Two American books with 1966 citations use it to mean pleasing, enjoyable and up to date.
One is Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, and the other is Robert Stone’s Hall of Mirrors.
4. Bippy
Bippy was probably a nonsense word at first.
It showed up in the phrase you bet your sweet bippy, where it stood for an unspecified part of the body.
It was in print by 1967.
The television show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In popularized the line.
The word is usually used with bet.
The show ran from 1968 to 1973.
The show’s producer, George Schlatter, said the words were funny rather than meaningful.
A possible Yiddish link, from a word for navel, remains unconfirmed.
Psst! How much do you know about the words of the sixties? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Sixties Words Quiz
Answer nine questions on words and phrases from the 1960s. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Before it meant a folk-music get-together, hootenanny was a dialect word for what?
5. Goopus
Goopus was teen slang for a fool.
Green's ties it to goofus and to the mythical goopus bird, which can neither swim, run nor fly.
A 1963 issue of the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee used it in a line that also has ginchy and skizzy.
A teen talk glossary in the Kansas paper Summerfield Sun defined it as a dope in 1969.
6. Skizzy
Skizzy was a general word of praise.
Green's cites it in the same 1963 Tennessee line, and in a 1961 issue of the British paper Mersey Beat that puts skizziest next to ginchiest.
A 1988 New Zealand dictionary of slang labels it 1960s teen slang, usually used by girls.
The opposite meaning, disgusting or repellent, has a citation from 1970.
7. Grody
A 1961 issue of the Long Beach Press-Telegram used grody as a noun, for a square.
Two 1966 issues of Current Slang spelled it groady, once for unkempt or untidy and once for a coarse, noisy party.
A 1968 issue of Current Slang defined groaty as physically unattractive.
Green's lists the 1982 song “Valley Girl” under the sense of disgusting or unpleasant.
That song came out more than two decades after the 1961 citation, which had a different meaning.
8. Yippie
Yippie came from Youth International Party, plus the ending -ie, as in hippie.
Anyone called a Yippie in 1968 was linked to a politically active group of hippies.
The word first appears in print in 1968.
A 2025 New Yorker sentence in Merriam-Webster's examples still pairs hippies with yippies.
Nowheresville and Dullsville
Nowheresville was one of several slang words ending in -sville.
Green's defines nowheresville as a situation, place or person seen as irrelevant, pointless, of no use at all.
American citations for it are from 1959 and 1960, the later one in the Sunday magazine of the Baltimore Sun.
A 1960 issue of the New York Times Magazine described the -ville ending as a suffix that marks an extreme.
The magazine's example was dullsville, an imaginary town marked by extreme dullness or boredom.
So -sville can be read as the extreme version of whatever comes before it.
Time magazine used dullsville as an adjective in 1966.
More Words Ending in -sville
Green's defines the ending -ville as a way to emphasize a trait, as in dragsville for very boring and sticksville for very rural or suburban.
The ending was first used in Britain but popularized by American beatniks in the 1950s, and Storyville in New Orleans is floated as a possible source.
Squaresville, a conventional and boring place, person or event, appears as early as 1953.
A 1960 issue of the Sandusky Register in Ohio used dripsville and gravesville in a single sentence.
A 1961 issue of the Long Beach Press-Telegram used antsville for a crowded place.
Hy Lit's 1968 dictionary of hip words defined noplaceville as a small town near a big city where everyone wears brown shoes, white socks and a crew cut.
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