CRUMBLIE

noun (People and Society) (Youth Culture) In young people's slang: an old or senile person (older than a wrinklie). Etymology: Formed by treating a figurative sense of the adjective as a noun; the metaphor relies on the assumption among the young that all elderly people will eventually 'crack up' and become senile. This process of crumbling, they suppose, is the natural next step after going wrinkly. History and Usage: Used mainly by children and teenagers from about the late seventies, and apparently limited to British English. The growing fashion among teenagers is to describe their parents as 'wrinklies' and their grandparents as 'crumblies'. A reader, however, tells me how she countered this when...she described her own children, in their earshot, as 'pimplies'. Daily Telegraph 26 Jan. 1987, p. 17