A timely thought

[sid]

As the days of analog timepieces fade into history, will the directions "Turn clockwise to tighten" soon lose all meaning?

Will the expression persist, complete with scholarly footnotes and diagrams?

What could possibly replace it?

Any youngsters out there who can give a current status report?

And, just for fun, what other words or phrases can you think of that belong to the past but live on in the present? (It's late, and all I can think of right now is "Hold your horses!")

Comments

[peoppenheimer]

lock, stock, and barrel

[sid]

Good one! I think it was only a few years ago that I actually learned the original meaning behind that.

Here via 3W4DW

[jest]

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!

Re: Here via 3W4DW

[sid]

Ooh, what does that one mean? Hi! :-)

Also here via 3W4DW

[lurkingcat]

CC doesn't mean what it used to.

(I remember watching my Mum make carbon copies when she was typing things up in the eighties but I haven't seen anyone else do that in decades).

Re: Also here via 3W4DW

[shiyiya]

My elementary school had a bunch of carbon paper that I suspect had been discarded from someone's office at the after school club! This would be in the late nineties. It was FASCINATING :P

Re: Also here via 3W4DW

[sid]

As far as I know, CC is still the standard. But I've noticed that when my attorney copies me on something there is only one C! Maybe that old usage is being questioned now.

I probably have made carbon copies (using loose sheets of carbon paper) somewhere in my past. *g* Who can remember back that far? I know I typed a lot of 3-part forms. Some had carbon layers between and some made carbonless copies.

Hi!

[chalcopyrite]

Prompted by your horse-holding -- "Giving [X] free rein."

[codeman38]

I've already seen that one folk-etymologized into "free reign" on several occasions. (And the misinterpretation makes just as much sense, honestly!)

(here via trouble)

[sid]

Whoa! :-D

I suspect this comment should go here instead of there--whoops

[jjhunter]

I SEE THAT METROPOLIS ICON THERE.

<3

As to your actual question, I know it took years for me to figure out 'a stitch in time' (I kept mistakenly associating it with A Wrinkle In Time), which is one I can imagine fading out of use for certain classes of people as high-end clothes transition to nano- and other seamless material. (Now that I'm independent, of course, I'm only all too aware that yes, a stitch in time does save nine, so grab those threads and needles stat.)

Some other ones...(cheats and looks at Wikipedia to get the exact phrasings); as is with the one above, there certain assumptions re: culture and privilege in terms of whether the saying in question still might have some experiential teeth.

• Take it with a grain of salt.
• All frills and no knickers.
• Born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
• A candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long
• To burn the candle at both ends.
• Don't have too many irons in the fire.
• Strike while the iron is hot.
• Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
• Don't put the cart before the horse.
• Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. [BOMBS AWAY!]
• For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost.
• Good wine needs no bush. [Thank you As You Like It]
• Not enough room to swing a cat [one hopes this is anachronistic]
• There's more than one way to skin a cat. [as mentioned previously...]

Re: I suspect this comment should go here instead of there--whoops

[sid]

I've never heard 'good wine needs no bush', but now that I've looked it up I like it!

Candles, irons, most anything to do with horses. Lots of good ones!

Re: I suspect this comment should go here instead of there--whoops

[dorothean]

I've heard that swinging a cat means swinging a cat o' nine tails, not a feline, which is bad in its own way I suppose!

[princessofgeeks]

dialing a phone, dial tone

typing. my kids learn keyboarding, which is.... wrong.

[cxcvi]

And along with that, the reasons of why we have the QWERTY layout will also probably be lost. The layout itself, however, will probably remain, unless someone really successful does something about it with the default layout of one of their products...

[codeman38]

On the "dial" note... I remember seeing some badly translated instructions once-- can't remember specifically what for, but it was some sort of electronic device made in China-- where the term "stir" was used to refer to dialing a number. (Google confirms the commonness of this mistranslation.) Thing is, that actually makes perfect sense when you think about the context of an old-fashioned phone dial-- and yet, it just sounds so weird.

[sid]

Even hanging up isn't the same!

I think they called it 'keyboard skills' when my nephew was taking it in school. My typing class had more manual than electric typewriters, so we had to switch around throughout the semester to give everyone a chance at the electrics!

[jazzfish]

I've been waiting for analog clocks to fade into history since I read that line in Hitchhiker's Guide about how earthlings "still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." No sign of it happening anytime soon: the low-end ones are cheaper than digital clocks, and the high-end ones are classier than any digital clock you can think of.

One 'phrase' that's teetering on the brink of irrelevance: "YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND, LIKE A... wtf is a record anyway?"

Heh.

[onyxlynx]

Speaking of which, what will replace the ancient riposte to the verbose: "Were you vaccinated with a phonograph needle?"

(The sheer number of explanatory footnotes for any Stephen King novel will be epic!)

There was apparently a major push for analog because it was felt (presumably by the usual cabal of conservatives) that digital was just too exact. (I own a pocket watch now (analog with Roman numerals) for when I can't use the phone--and there's another--and got into the digital conversation. Also the clockwise and the Roman numeral conversation, because people apparently only see those in movie copyright notices. Ha.) Hmmm. Just realized that the phrase "My hat's off to you!" is ineffective when almost no one neither Hasidic nor Amish actually wears a hat anymore.

[archersangel]

on TV they used to say "don't touch that dial" to get you to keep watching. or even "stay tuned." and to get you to watch next week they tell you to "tune in next week." same bat time, same bat channel.

[sid]

No more dials, no more tuning. Push a button.

Holy remote control, Batman!

[catspaw]

I reckon it'll probably persist with no thougt to its meaning, and eventually turn up as a question on QI ;-)

[sid]

At some point we all had to learn what it meant, and I'm sure it was explained as "the way the hands go 'round on the clock."

Future kid: Bwuh? Clocks don't have hands!

Anyway, however it gets explained to kids in the future, I've learned that it gets very confusing when you're reaching down/under/where you can't see, trying to unfasten a very stubborn plastic nut holding the toilet seat you want to replace! I finally had to lie on my back and look up at it in order to determine which way was counter-clockwise. *g*

[butterflydreaming]

Speaking of trailers, movie trailers (aka previews) come before the movie now.

With so many devices going to a touch screen or being motion sensitive (like lights, faucets, and XBox Kinect), will "pushing your buttons" become as anachronistic as the Mix Tape?

[sid]

I never would have thought of "pushing your buttons"! I wonder how long that sayings been around, now that I'm thinking about it. It must be fairly modern.

Obsolete phrases

[wilson_dizard]

The passing of some technologies, or the geographic shift of some industries, also leaves behind traces in economic statistics, as well as in the language.

For example, US statistics about industrial production and exports, which are classified into four-digit Standard Industrial Classification Codes, formerly had dozens of categories for various kinds of shoe machinery. By the same token, the statistics that tracked employment trends assigned tracked all kinds of worker skills related to shoe manufacturing.

About 30 years ago, when the US shoe industry sailed offshore and the computer industry took off, a reform of the SIC codes took place to accommodate the changes. In 1997, statisticians, rolled out a more detailed six-digit North American Industry Classification System.

To give an example of two phrases that you still might hear, "a flash in the pan" and "hanging fire" both refer to malfunctions of muzzle-loading firearms. Though in fact, the hobbyists who build and use those muskets might still experience, and definitely understand, those events.

One bizarre regional term sometimes heard in England is "dropping a clanger." It refers to a bygone cooking recipe or meal practice in which a farm cook would prepare pastries filled with meat at one end and jam at the other. The field worker would eat the meat-filled part first, and then the jam-filled part for dessert. Dropping this clanger before lunch would mix up the two parts; and probably break the pastry as well, resulting in an unappetizing mess. Hence, "dropping a clanger" as a mistake.

Re: Obsolete phrases

[sid]

Fascinating stuff! I can't believe I've never wondered what a 'clanger' is.

My maternal grandmother worked in a shoe factory in the 1910s. :-)

[alltoseek]

Ha ha - now you get more new comments to this old post! :D

I was just thinking about the 'gift horse' one yesterday, but someone already mentioned it.

All those nauticalisms - so many I didn't even know they were nauticalisms! So they are already obsolete but persistent:

*Don't sweat the small stuff
*The devil to pay and no pitch hot
*Between the devil and the deep blue sea
*The bitter end

I'm sure there's lots more; that's just top of head.

For clockwise: You know, I filled the house with analog clocks just to make sure my kids would learn to tell time on analog as well as digital (didn't have to worry too much, the school still teaches time-telling on analog).

But clockwise and counter-clockwise will still persist in anything that turns, like screws and jar lids. I can't see us replacing the term; I bet we'll continue to say clockwise, even if the term gets corrupted and shortened along the way.

Also bet we hang onto analog displays, even if they are driven digitally! :D

[sid]

Would you believe my schooling never included being taught to tell time? All of a sudden one day we're given a standardized test to take, and several of the questions involved reading the face of a clock. I just had to guess...and I obviously guessed wrong, because the teacher called my mother and said, "She doesn't know how to tell time!"

Mom had just assumed they would teach me. You would think!

[alltoseek]

Widdershins! I knew I'd come up with it. Predates clock faces. Now archaic, but maybe it will be revived once clock faces are archaic *g*

[sid]

Already mentioned above. But if that gives us 'counter-clockwise', we're still lacking a 'clockwise' reference. Maybe counter-widdershins would work? :-D