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by Kate Woodford
In today’s post, I’m looking at a selection of the phrases that we use for talking about the past. As you’ll see, some of these phrases express nostalgia, that mixture of pleasure and sadness that we all feel about some things in our past.
Let’s start with the often-used phrase, before someone’s time. A thing or person that was before someone’s time was from a period before that person was born or spent time somewhere:
I’d never heard of the band they were talking about – they were before my time.
Did you know Maria from accounts, or was she before your time?
To talk about a time in the past when things were quite different from today, we use phrases such as in those days, back then, back in the days when… or in the old days:
In those days there were far fewer cars on the road.
Back then, tickets for football matches were reasonably priced.
Back in the days when we only had four TV channels, we all watched the same thing.
Of course, in the old days everyone wore hats.
Some expressions are used mainly for recalling things that were better about the past, for example, Time was (when)… or Once upon a time (the phrase originally used at the beginning of children’s stories to mean ‘long ago’):
Time was when you could go out after dark and feel perfectly safe.
Once upon a time, you could buy a house in this street with a factory worker’s wages.
Similarly, the slightly informal phrase back in the day often accompanies a pleasant memory:
Back in the day, we knew everyone who lived on this street.
I could walk ten miles with no difficulty back in the day.
A period of time in the past that is thought to be better than the present is sometimes called the good old days. People often use this phrase ironically to refer to a time that was actually worse than the present, or they simply say, the bad old days:
This happened in the good old days when we didn’t worry about sugar and additives.
In the bad old days, of course, there were no limits on carbon emissions.
I’ll finish with the useful adjective bygone. People talk about a ‘bygone era/age’ or ‘bygone days’, meaning ‘a period of time long ago in the past’:
With his elegant suit and hat, he looks like something out of a bygone age.
The law is basically a relic of bygone days.
I hope you find these phrases useful when you next want to talk about the past.
1. A more formal phrase is “In days of yore’ …”
2/. There is also “When I was young’ …” or “When I was a child’ ….” or “When I was growing up’ …” , etc.
Absolutely helpful with my current writing pursuit.
Thank you for an article, very useful. Interestingly, that by selecting a certain expression, we can convey our feelings.