Take another tack.
Flash in the pan.
The Devil to Pay
I was reading something the other day, and one character was making fun of another character because he called him at home, and asked, “Where are you?”
Not really a stupid question any more.
“Take another tack,” isn’t anachronistic, is it? A lot of people still sail recreationally, even if it’s not a primary method of transportation any more. Or am I wrong about the origin of the phrase? And what’s anachronistic about “The Devil to pay?”
Just the other day I read somewhere (might have been on the Dope actually) of a woman who answered her cellphone in a restaurant with, “How did you know I’d be here?” 
This one is an anachronistic sound effect:
When a humorous film or TV show wants to do a gag involving background music cutting off, I still hear them use the sound of a needle being scratched off of a record.
I’m not saying I doubt you, but I can’t understand how anyone born in the mid-1980s or later could be unfamiliar with the sound of a record scratch.
Supposedly it is a reference to the age of sail, when you had to “Pay” the seams of a ship by patching them with hot pitch. The Devil being the seam between the deck and the hull, and being the most difficult to pay.
I’ve also heard that the expression “I’m pooped” comes from the Poop Deck on sailing warships, which was the part where most of the ship’s officers stood watch from. Presumably, a crewman assigned to a detail on the Poop deck would find himself entirely unable to goof off, and would spend the entire time there toiling away so as to avoid being disciplined by the officers. Thus, he would be “pooped”.
In the military, we talk about being “Shipped out” somewhere, even though I’m pretty sure the preferred methods of transportation for this purpose are airplanes and busses.
It’s a box. It contains ice (usually). Why not call it that?
Part of this labour, no doubt, was polishing the brass monkeys on which the cannon balls were stacked. :dubious:
Seriously, this sort of folk etymology can be attractive - but this sense of “poop” didn’t enter the language until the thirties, and the phrase “the devil to pay” had been in use for almost two hundred years before the word “devil” has been recorded in connection with the seam of a ship.
Just so. Not only is sailing not obsolete, they continue to make innovations in the design and rigging of sailing vessels. And as long as there are sailing vessels, if they wish to go in the direction the wind is blowing from, they’ll have to tack in order to do it.
That doesn’t make much sense. “The devil to pay,” doesn’t refer to the hardest part of a job, it refers to dire consequences from a given course of action. It seems like a pretty straightforward metaphor. When you sin, you pay for it in hell. And since the devil rules hell, you’re paying the devil. I’m sure it was used quite frequently on boats, but probably in reference to the concept of paying for one’s sins.
I still tell someone who’s annoying me with repetitious conversation that they sound like a broken record.
He’s familiar with that sound effect, but that’s not what he heard. It was just the popping and clicking associated with old, well-worn records. He had never before heard this as I hadn’t played my record collection in many years.
The phrase was originally “The devil to paye and no pitch hot” and refers to using tar to patch a difficult seam in the ship.
No equivalent of Rough and Tumble where you grew up? Admittedly they do more antique, often steam-powered, tractors than anything else, but I know I saw a real steam roller at a Steam-Up once. Noisy beast.
I work at a daycare in a very old building where we still do turn some of the lights on and off. (Sometimes I wonder how that building passes fire codes…) Most of us flip a switch up or down, but still ask someone to turn off the light.
Sorry to take the wind out of your sails, but it appears much earlier in Swift’s Journal to Stella, with no nautical association.
It appears as well in Polite Conversation:
This is a straightforward expression which was punned on later. (“The devil to paye and no pitch hot” first appeared in 1865.)
It’s a throwback to the days when the iceman cometh, to bring you ice to put in your ice box to keep your food cold.
Then along came this marvelous new invention, the refrigerator, that made its own cold.
I get ya. Just an Icebox, to me, is a cabinet and the Ice Man Cometh, ((possibly 3 Icemen) usually on a horse drawn cart, and maybe need to use oversized tongs to actually deliver ice to the icebox
**
Larry Miller** I do make that distinction and am not clear on what you are saying.
I still hear the term “steam shovel” here and there.
If you’re refering to Larry Mudd’s post #18, I think the point is that a Digital Video Disc is a ‘video’.
I think the point is that you probably have watched a video—just a video disc rather than a videotape.
“Video” in the pure sense just means something you watch. Somewhere along the line, “video” came to be the shortened word for “video tape” or “video cassette,” but it doesn’t have to mean that.