Date:  Sun, 12 Dec 1993 13:04:04 -0700

From:  Rudy Troike <RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ARIZVMS.BITNET>

Subject: Re: name that decade



(Message continued):



    Dar



    DARE or one of the major dictionaries may have dated files on when

the 30s, 40s, and 50s began seriously being referred to as such. When I was

growing up, it was commonplace to hear of "the Roaring Twenties", to the extent

they they took on an almost mythical dimension, perhaps the way ex-hippies

remember the 60s, but the (always Roaring) Twenties were followed by "the

(Great) Depression" and "the Depression years", the "the Thirties", and then

in turn by "the War" and "the war years", which were followed by "the post-war

era".

    I remember being belatedly shocked into the sensibility that "the

Fifties" had even been a characterizable decade only after constant references

 to "the 60s" began to arise, and only much later to find nostalgic references

to movies and radion programs "back in the 40s". So while scattered uses of

decade numbers for the 30s, 40s, and 50s may come earlier, the wider popular

use I would think is more recent, a product, like many things, of "the 60s".

They, an dthe (Roaring) Twenties, are likely to be the only decades remembered

as such in this century.

    --Rudy Troike