12 Slang Words Everyone Used in the 1960s (That Nobody Says Now)

If one word has to stand in for the whole era, it’s this one. Groovy meant good, pleasant, all-around wonderful — a party could be groovy, a shirt could be groovy, so could the way the afternoon was going.

“Come on over, we’re just hanging out — it’s a real groovy scene.” It hung on into the early ’70s, then curdled into something you could only say as a joke. Nobody uses it straight anymore, and honestly that’s a small shame.

Far out was for the things that knocked you sideways — the ones that seemed almost too much to be real. It carried a little awe in it, a little wonder.

“They’re putting a man on the moon? Man, that is far out.” You said it slow, usually, with your eyebrows up. It’s the kind of phrase that instantly time-stamps whoever says it.

Before boss meant your supervisor and nothing else, it meant terrific. A boss car, a boss jacket, a boss guitar solo — the best of its kind, no notes.

“Check out his new ride — that thing is boss.” It was big with the surf and hot-rod crowd especially. The word never left the language, of course; it just went back to only meaning the person who signs your checks.

Your threads were your clothes, and the word had a swagger to it that “outfit” never managed. You dressed up, you were showing off your threads.

“Nice threads — where’d you get that jacket?” This one had roots going back to earlier jazz and hipster talk, but it was still in steady use in the ’60s. You’ll hear it now and then even today, though it always sounds like a wink.

Bread meant money, plain and simple. If you were short on bread, you were broke; if a gig paid decent bread, you took it.

“I’d love to go, but I’m a little low on bread this week.” Like “threads,” it drifted in from older jazz slang and got a second life in the ’60s. “Dough” outlived it; “bread,” for the most part, went stale.

A square was someone out of step — too straight-laced, too conventional, missing whatever was happening. It was the great insult of the era, and the thing everybody was quietly terrified of being.

“Don’t be such a square, come to the show.” The story goes that it came from bandleaders drawing a square in the air with their hands to mock someone stuck on the plain four-beat — though that origin gets repeated more often than it gets proven.

To dig something was to like it or to get it — sometimes both at once. “You dig?” tacked onto the end of a sentence was a way of asking whether you were following along.

“I really dig this record — you dig?” It came up out of jazz culture and spread far beyond it. You still hear “I dig it” occasionally, which is more than most of this list can say.

When something was so good it was almost hard to believe, it was out of sight — off the charts, beyond the ordinary scale of things.

“That band last night was out of sight.” It’s actually an old expression that got a fresh charge in the ’60s, and it later got shortened to the “outta sight” you’d hear in a lot of soul records. Warm, generous, and gone.

Cool it meant settle down, ease off, quit making a scene. A parent said it, a friend said it, a cop said it — usually to somebody getting worked up.

“Hey, cool it — you’re gonna wake the whole house.” It’s tied to that whole family of “cool” slang the era ran on. This one has aged better than most, but it still carries a distinct whiff of the period.

Calling something “the most” meant it was the peak, the ultimate, nothing better going. It’s a strange little construction when you stop and look at it, and that was half the charm.

“That girl, that car, that whole night — she’s the most.” It carried over from ’50s beatnik talk into the early ’60s before it faded out. Say it now and you sound like you wandered in from a coffeehouse in 1961.

Fab was just fabulous with the ending chopped off, and it got a giant push when the Beatles arrived and the press started calling them the Fab Four.

“Did you see them on Ed Sullivan? Absolutely fab.” It had more of a British flavor to it, but it crossed the ocean fast on the back of the band. These days it survives mostly in a knowing, slightly campy way.

Daddy-o was how you addressed a guy — a friendly, breezy “hey, man” with a little jazz-club cool baked in. It didn’t mean anybody’s father.

“What’s the word, daddy-o?” By the mid-’60s it was already sliding toward parody, the kind of thing a square would say trying to sound hip. Which is exactly why nobody says it now without grinning.