old codger/coot/fogy
old codger/coot/fogy
Unflattering names for an elderly man. Old codger, dating from the mid-1700s, may imply that he is testy or crusty, whereas old coot, from the mid-1800s, indicates he is silly or ignorant. As for an old fogy, he may be hidebound in tradition. None of these is a desirable epithet, or, as Terrel Bell put it, “There’s only one thing worse than an old fogy, and that’s a young fogy” (commencement address at Longwood College, Virginia, June 17, 1985). A newer and decidedly vulgar synonym is old fart, dating from the first half of the 1900s. Phil Donahue said it of himself on his NBC television show in 1992: “I didn’t always look like an old fart like this.”
See also: codger, coot, fogy, old
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
- better be an old man's darling than a young man's slave
- bolt bucket
- be as old as Methuselah
- a piece of old tackie
- be (as) old as the hills
- any old
- bucket of bolts
- auld
- ape leader
- an old fogey/fogy