Out of Date French Expressions: So last Century

We all cringe when our parents use expressions popular in their youth or wear hairstyles that haven't change since their high school year book was published. (I can explain my hair: it's fine and straight and won't do anything else.)

I just found out that the French government has just officially declared that they will no longer use the word mademoiselle on government forms or documents. Feminist groups won their campaign to get the French government to agree to changing to a less sexist wording. This essentially shifts the use of madame to all females, thus giving that word the meaning of Ms. in English. Let's not expect spoken French to be immediately affected but this will be useful to know for foreigners going forward.

I feel the use of Ms. in English has basically given all of us a reason to just drop such titles entirely when possible. It feels silly to send mail to personal friends using Mrs., Ms. or Mr. and to strangers there is always the possibility of making a mistake... especially as in English we like to name our girls with boys names which then evolve into girls names. (Example: Kimberly). Apparently, once a girl has born a boy's name there are now "girl germs" on the name.

How else might the French language have changed in the last 50 years that we sometimes don't know about?

garçon = a word that English speakers may still think is the way to call a restaurant waiter.  I couldn't bring myself to use that term personally, calling any adult man a "boy" has too many derogatory connotations in English.

à la mode = in English it means a food served with ice cream. In French it means "in fashion" or fashionable. Don't rely on menu photos of food either. I once ordered pancakes for breakfast in England thinking they were topped, as in the States, with butter. No... that was a scoop of ice cream in the photo.

toster = "certain words in English are actually borrowings from old French, which then have later been re-borrowed back into French in the newer Anglicized form. Toast in English comes from old French toster, whereas modern French stopped using toster in favor of pain grillé, but has also borrowed toast from modern English. So is le toast really an Anglicism if it was originally French?" from correct-words-french

I think my main point is using the wrong word just causes so much confusion. Work at finding the current terms, not ones borrowed from 50-year-old movies.