Word.ws English Dictionary

they don't make them like that anymore

they don't make them like that anymore phrase: expressing such notions as that the person referred to is excellent and that owing to the decline of society, such people have become rarer; the old school was better; the youth today lack something that previous generations had more of; all the good ones are taken; and so on.

they don't make them like that anymore: expressing such notions as that the person referred to is excellent and that owing to the decline...
Image: That Hartford Guy, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Phrase

they don't make them like that anymore

  1. (idiomatic) Expressing such notions as that the person referred to is excellent and that owing to the decline of society, such people have become rarer; the old school was better; the youth today lack something that previous generations had more of; all the good ones are taken; and so on.
    • A: What a guardian angel that guy was to so many people. B: Yup. They don't make them like that anymore.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see they, don't, make, them, like, that, anymore: the model of vehicle, machine, or device exemplified by the instance under discussion is no longer manufactured.
    • She's got whitewall tires and suicide doors / Under the hood, got a four-fifty-four / Well, they don't make 'em like that no more / Not since nineteen seventy-four / Big cars / Yeah, I like big cars2002, Heather Myles, “Big Cars”, in Sweet Talk and Good Lies, performed by Heather Myles

Forms of they don't make them like that anymore

alternative formthey don't make them like they used to

Questions about they don't make them like that anymore

What does they don't make them like that anymore mean?
They don't make them like that anymore means expressing such notions as that the person referred to is excellent and that owing to the decline of society, such people have become rarer; the old school was better; the youth today lack something that previous generations had more of; all the good ones are taken; and so on.
What part of speech is they don't make them like that anymore?
They don't make them like that anymore is a phrase.

Words near they don't make them like that anymore in the dictionary

  1. thews
  2. thewsome
  3. thewy
  4. Thexton
  5. they
  6. they don't make them like that anymore
  7. they don't make them like they used to
  8. they hate us 'cause they ain't us
  9. they hit the Pentagon
  10. they say
  11. they should have sent a poet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: they don't make them like that anymore (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “they don't make them like that anymore.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/they_don%27t_make_them_like_that_anymore. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.