>Oh for cryin' out loud, I was using those expressions ironically, as a joke, to go with the accusation that I was using old-fshioned expressions. Like I didn't know that?! BTW, you missed "the very latest thing" which dates back to racoon coats and straw boaters, which later became "all the rage" in the 50s, then "in" in the swinging 60s, and is now probably "right out there" or some such. "Dig" is probably now "'Stan' wha'm'sayin'?"

Amazingly, some of parallel expressions back home have had not quite a parallel life. The verb for "dig" was "kužiti" - from Croatian slang, which spread everywhere and became almost equal to "kapirati" (borrowed from Italian) and "kontati" (from Bosnian slang). The etymology of "kužiti" is probably impossible to, ahem, dig out. The only possible root is "kuga" (plague), and the only similar verb is "raskužiti" (to disinfect). As usual, after a decade or so, the verb moved from slang to regular street talk, then into newspapers, then into regular language.

The expression which changes most often is the current equivalent of "great". When I was a kid, it was "krvav" (bloody). Then it was "super", "strašan" (horrible), "strava" (horror), "gotivan" (no other meaning or root), "boli glava" (head hurts), "do jaja" (up to the crotch), "izuva" (it unshoes) or in modern Croatian "brije" (it shaves). I may have skipped a few.