Common phrases that have outlived the technology they were associated with

[Yavin4]

For example, "You sound like a broken record." This was related to scratched vinyl albums that got stuck at a particular point when played and constantly repeats the same passage.

"Drop a dime on someone". Refers to using a pay phone to tattle on someone. No one uses pay phones any more.

[sharp_stick]

1. Roll Down The Windows n/t

[jberryhill]

2. Dial a telephone number

[Alpeduez21]

3. Dead as a door nail

[LAS14]

18. What's the origin of this?

[wishstar]

30. The phrase was first used in a 14th century poem by William Langland

Amazingly resilient

"This is old - at least 14th century. There's a reference to it in print in 1350, a translation by William Langland of the French poem Guillaume de Palerne:
"For but ich haue bote of mi bale I am ded as dorenayl."

Langland also used the expression in the much more famous poem The Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman, circa 1362:
Fey withouten fait is febelore þen nouȝt, And ded as a dore-nayl.
[Faith without works is feebler than nothing, and dead as a doornail.]

The expression was in widespread colloquial use in England by the 16th century, when Shakespeare gave these lines to the rebel leader Jack Cade in King Henry VI, Part 2,1592"

[LAS14]

31. Thanks, but what IS a door nail/dore-nayl??? nt

[Ptah]

33. door·nail

door·nail
ˈdôrnāl
noun
a stud set in a door for strength or as an ornament.

[Alpeduez21]

46. In colonial days(and probably before)

when a house burned down the nails would be collected from the ashes. They were usually undamaged. Making nails was a long expensive process. "Door nails" after being nailed through the door jamb were bent. Thepart sticking through the jamb was bent, that is. After a fire these bent nails were not reusable because they were bent.

[LAS14]

48. Wow! Thanks!

[sharp_stick]

4. Hang Up The Phone n/t

[Rhiannon12866]

43. Good one!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. And for a long time before pay phones became obsolete, a call was a quarter.

I think the dime phone call went away in the '80s, maybe earlier.

[Mrs. Overall]

6. Burn the midnight oil.

[Warpy]

7. Dear John letter

Now they do it by text.

[cemaphonic]

8. Not exactly a saying, but a book quote in the same spirit:

(from Neuromancer by William Gibson)
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Nowadays, this would mean a clear blue sky.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Your three minutes are up....regarding long distance phone call billing.

[TexasProgresive]

10. Referring to audio and audio/video recordings as tape.

[underpants]

16. Or an album

[TexasProgresive]

20. Actually album still works for a cd or even a file with multiple recordings

album |ˈalbəm|
noun
1 a blank book for the insertion of photographs, stamps, or pictures: the wedding pictures had pride of place in the family album.
2 a collection of recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, or another medium.

Now if you had said LP or EP or 45 or 78 those are anachronistic. Except I see some young people buying old and new vinyl albums. What I really miss with LPs were the cover art and liner notes. Don't get much of that with CDs and none at all with online music. Sad, bigly Sad.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. Crank the engine.

Now it's just a term meaning getting it going with a starter, but in the Model T days you had to start a car engine with a handle that turned the crankshaft.

[rurallib]

12. "We are taping" - does anyone use tape or film anymore?

[Midwestern Democrat]

55. There's still a few film directors (Spielberg, Tarantino, etc) who insist on using 35mm film rather

than digital but digital finally overtook film in major motion pictures in 2012 - only 29 films were shot on film in 2016.

?resize=700%2C386&ssl=1

[MontanaMama]

13. I'm forever asking my kid

to "tape a show for me". It drives him nuts!

[Flo Mingo]

14. Glove compartment

And trunk

[LAS14]

19. Why is trunk obsolete?

[TexasProgresive]

22. It was obsolete for all of my life.

The trunk referred to an actual trunk mounted on the rear of an automobile.

[Sanity Claws]

26. The Brits call it the boot of the car

Did they put boots back there?
I'm laughing at the thought of placing boots in the back of the car and bonnets in the front.

[LAS14]

29. Aha!! Thanks much. nt

[Flo Mingo]

47. Glad you asked...

North Americans use the term “trunk” because up until the 1930's most drivers used to strap travel chests, called trunks, to the backs of their cars. Of course, once automakers started designing cars with built-in rear compartments, there were no longer any reasons to travel with trunks. The name, however, stuck.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

59. Cigarette lighter. NT

[ailsagirl]

60. I still say both

[California_Republic]

15. Caught on tape...... cameras were rolling

[IphengeniaBlumgarten]

17. Ice box

Back in the 1940s, you could still get a block of ice delivered to your home to put in these insulated cabinets and keep your food cool.

[tblue37]

51. As a child I once asked my Sicilian grandmother what the Italian word for refrigerator

was.

Her response: "ice-a-boxa."

She left Sicily before refrigerators had been invented, so the term she learned from her immigrant community was based on the American term for the only form of "refrigeration" they had in the early 20ty century--actual ice boxes.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

21. "In the limelight"

[Yavin4]

23. Carbon Copy (CC) or Blind Carbon Copy(BCC)

Those acronyms are still in use on emails but their origins were from when people would insert carbon paper between two sheets paper to make a copy of the original for distribution.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. Hang up the phone.

You can't "hang up" a phone any more. The receivers of the old wall-mounted phones hung on a hook, and when you hung the receiver on the hook the call would terminate. These were later replaced with desk phones where the receiver sat in a cradle and the call would be terminated when the phone depressed the buttons in the cradle - so even with those phones you technically weren't hanging them up.

It used to be so satisfying to end an angry conversation by slamming the receiver down so the person on the other end would hear a "clunk!" followed by a dial tone (another obsolete term). When you "hang up" now all you do is press a button, alas.

[KT2000]

25. slam down the phone

can't do that anymore.

[yellowdogintexas]

63. incredibly frustrating when you really want to do that

and that still happens once in a while

[GreydeeThos]

27. They still use pay phones in Chicago

These are at the Navy Pier.



However they cost 50 cents now.

[GreydeeThos]

28. "Don't pump the gas peddle, you'll flood it!"

Automobiles no longer have carburetors, accelerator pumps, and do not flood when the driver repeatedly tamps down on the gas peddle when the engine is not running.

[NotASurfer]

34. Let's Rewind

I've caught myself using that phrase recently and wonder how you'd translate that for today's tech - "let's revert to a prior time index?"

[Muffy88]

35. Pop stand

Does "Let's blow this pop stand" count?

[OilemFirchen]

36. Did you leave the bottles in the milk box?

[FuzzyRabbit]

38. My parents called the refrigerator the "ice box".

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

39. So did mine. Sometimes I do myself, even though

I never saw a real one. I do recall an old ('30s vintage) refrigerator my grandmother had - it had legs and a door that latched sort of like an old car door. The compressor was a cylindrical thing on its top, and it vibrated enough that the whole refrigerator would start to creep across the kitchen. They were always shoving it back against the wall where it belonged. The thing was still working until the mid '80s.

The milk box was a different thing; it was an insulated metal box into which the milkman would put your dairy products upon his weekly or bi-weekly delivery. Our milk box was by the back door. The milk came in glass bottles and had paper and foil caps.

[Rhiannon12866]

44. I remember milkboxes. My aunt always had one

I don't think we had a box, but I can remember milk being delivered to the door. There was one time we were away and came home to find the milk had frozen. It formed a column out of the bottles with the paper caps on top. And I also remember that you had to shake it since the cream was on the top. Am I old?

[politicat]

42. Still possible in my area.

We have two services that deliver milk, eggs, cheese, juice and other dairy. Add in a CSA and a meat share, and food's pretty much covered.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

37. Run through the wringer.

Before the days of dryers, you had to hang your clothes on a clothesline, but to get as much water out of them as possible you'd use the wringer feature of your washing machine. The washer looked like a tub on legs, and on top of it were a couple of parallel rollers that you'd feed the clothes through to squish the water out. My grandma had one of these. You had to watch out for your fingers.

[Upthevibe]

40. Wrinkle free fax paper......... I'm a HUGE "Friends" fan. This show can turn my mood around

so fast. I just love these guys....anyhow.....Chandler just walked in with a bottle of champagne (one of the episodes where he and Monica are sneaking around) and saw the whole gang there and made the excuse (for the champagne) and said excitedly, "My office just got wrinkle free fax paper!"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

41. I've never watched that show so I'm afraid I don't get the reference...

[Rhiannon12866]

45. My grandmother had one of those

I remember seeing it, but not in actual operation. But she must have used it because I remember it being "out." Apparently it was put away when it wasn't being used.

[NNadir]

49. Putting the cart before the horse.

[madamesilverspurs]

50. Three sheets to the wind.

Also, "by and large" from the same set.


.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

52. Put through the wringer

I remember helping my grandmother run clothes through a hand-cranked wringer before they were hung out to dry.

[uriel1972]

53. Mind your "p's" and "q's" from early printing techniques...nt

[mikeargo]

54. Cut and Paste

I'm so old, I remember when we really did that, working on the high school paper, with a glue pot and scissors.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

56. "Lordy, I hope there are tapes"

As if anyone has used a tape in the past few decades.

[NotASurfer]

58. Circle the wagons...

...independent prosecutor's rounded up a posse, and it's too late to saddle up and put the spurs to it, and this might just be a hangin' offense

[Iggo]

61. "Don't touch that dial."

Um...what dial? All I see are buttons.

(Actually, I think that one may have finally died out.)

[Kaleva]

62. The smoking lamp is out

"The smoking lamp has survived only as a figure of speech. When the officer of the deck says "the smoking lamp is out" before drills, refueling or taking ammunition, that is the Navy's way of saying "cease smoking.""

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/708.html

Back when I was in the Navy, the last word passed over the 1MC at 2200hrs was "Taps, taps lights out, all hands turn in to your bunks and maintain silence about the decks. The smoking lamp is extinguished in all berthing spaces. Now Taps." and in the morning, it was " "Reveille! Reveille! Reveille! All hands heave out and trice up. The smoking lamp is lighted in all authorized spaces. Reveille!"

There's several terms used by the Navy today that originate from the days of sail.

[duncang]

64. Just a flash in the pan

When you tried firing a musket and only the powder in the pan went off. But the main charge didn't ignite.