20 Odd Slang Terms and Activities from the Roaring Twenties That Prove Young People Have Always Been Confusing

20 Odd Slang Terms and Activities from the Roaring Twenties That Prove Young People Have Always Been Confusing

Larry Holzwarth - August 9, 2018

20 Odd Slang Terms and Activities from the Roaring Twenties That Prove Young People Have Always Been Confusing
The popular 1921 film The Queen of Sheba led to young men and women calling themselves sheiks and shebas. Wikimedia

Relationships

A sheba’s boyfriend was her sheik, though if he was wealthy her friends might have referred to him as her daddy. A girl who deliberately pursued wealthy men was a gold-digger, a term meant to be disparaging no matter how classy her chassis. Both men and women who were interested in each other but not yet at the level of sheik and sheba were said to be each other’s crush. A sheba did not necessarily need to be a flapper. The flapper style met with disapproval by many parents, who refused to let their daughters adopt the fashion.

A flapper’s father was her dapper, and a sheik meeting a dapper was likely to meet with the dapper’s disapproval if the sheik was a dewdropper. The condition of the sheik’s flivver was also often subject to the dapper’s discerning gaze. A sheik wanting to blouse off from the dapper as quickly as possible might tell his sheba to get a wiggle on, meaning let’s get going. Even when the sheik arrived at the door Joe Brooks (very well dressed) the dapper was an obstacle. A prepared sheik would know his onions when he picked up his sheba at her dapper’s door. Some dappers refused to let their daughters go out with a sheik who merely honked the horn for her when he arrived at her home.

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