Was talking to my grandfather last weekend and he used a word for a specific type of small steel tumbler that I genuinely had never heard before in my entire life, despite growing up in this city and hearing plenty of older relatives talk. When I asked him about it, he laughed and said half the words he grew up using have basically disappeared from how people actually speak now, replaced either by English equivalents or just fallen out of use entirely across just two generations.
It got me thinking about how much smaller everyday vocabulary shifts without anyone particularly noticing it happening in real time, no one decides collectively to stop using a word, it just slowly stops getting passed down until only the oldest generation still says it naturally, and everyone younger either half remembers hearing it or has genuinely never encountered it at all growing up themselves.
My own parents still use a handful of specific terms for household items and food that I understand perfectly but would never actually say myself in conversation, feeling slightly self conscious using them the way my parents do without a second thought, almost like the words carry an accent of an earlier time that does not quite fit how people my age actually talk day to day now.
Asked a couple of friends my own age about this too, and most of us could only really name maybe two or three words each that our own grandparents use regularly that we ourselves basically never say, though we all understand them fine when we hear them used in that specific older generation context around us.
Feels like a small but real kind of loss happening quietly in the background, not dramatic enough for anyone to actually document properly, just slowly fading out generation by generation without much fanfare either way.
What are some specific old Hyderabadi words or phrases your own grandparents or parents still use regularly that you almost never actually say yourself anymore in normal conversation?