A timely thought
Apr. 28th, 2011 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidAs 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!")
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!")
Obsolete phrases
Date: Jan. 9th, 2013 11:43 am (UTC)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
Date: Jan. 9th, 2013 04:39 pm (UTC)My maternal grandmother worked in a shoe factory in the 1910s. :-)