I remember dropsy being used seriously for – I think it was – edema, never jokingly. Dingus was fairly common when I was a kid ('50s - '60s); I certainly remember fracture: "That fractured me" was functionally the same as "That cracked me up." I never heard anyone use ginchy conversationally, just Gidget or Annette or someone saying, "It's the ginchiest!" At that young age, whatever it was, I found that it sounded horribly contrived and made my skin crawl.
deaconB: I read that NPR story because I was curious about "bazoo". We still use the slang term "wazoo" (although it seems to be less and less common). A typical usage would be "up the wazoo", from which context you can easily discern the meaning. But I've never heard or read "bazoo" until now.
Unfortunately, the example usage for "bazoo" in the NPR article left me grasping for context ... totally unclear, could mean many things. But I'm guessing it has/had the same meaning as "wazoo" before it became obsolete?
Not even sure it's obsolete or "lost" as NPR describes it. Got 420,000 hits on Google, where the additional meanings of "mouth" and "piece of trash" are found.
My mother (who was mad when she went into labor with me because she'd miss that evening's episode of 77 Sunset Strip, by way of establishing chronological context) said the only slang word growing up that she could never figure out was zorch. I've heard it in a couple of novelty songs by Nervous Norvus, but can't figure out the meaning from those.