# Anachronisms that persist
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [June 10, 2021, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009 "2021-06-10T22:28:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/41 "2021-06-11T16:38:57Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#):
>
> The term ‘taping’ a video or audio recording is still in common use even though it has been almost two decades since digital optical disk formats (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) have virtually taken over those formats (and digital compression and streaming have made all dedicated ‘hard’ media obsolescent).
I don’t know f it’s universal, but I also still “rewind” videos or music tracks, may they be files in a media player or tracks on CDs/DVDs/Blu-Rays.
I also often say that I “put on a record” if I add an album to my queue in a streaming app/website.
---
### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/42 "2021-06-11T16:40:10Z")
The terminology for the email “in box” and “out box” dates back to small physical boxes that sat on work desktops, for incoming and outgoing paper memos.
---
### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/43 "2021-06-11T16:43:15Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#):
>
> I don’t know f it’s universal, but I also still “rewind” videos or music tracks, may they be files in a media player or tracks on CDs/DVDs/Blu-Rays.
Not being snarky, just genuinely curious: what do you mean by “rewinding” a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray? Do you mean if you replay them you just call it “rewinding”?
---
### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/44 "2021-06-11T16:45:38Z")
> [@solost](#):
>
> Not being snarky, just genuinely curious: what do you mean by “rewinding” a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray? Do you mean if you replay them you just call it “rewinding”?
I use it when I click the, well, rewind button (\<\<) (that’s still the same symbol as it was on tape recorders and cassette players) to skip back in a song or video.
---
### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/45 "2021-06-11T16:46:08Z")
Ah, ok, got it.
---
### Author:  [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/46 "2021-06-11T16:48:37Z")
> [@whitetho](#):
>
> The terminology for the email “in box” and “out box” dates back to small physical boxes that sat on work desktops, for incoming and outgoing paper memos.
I have that. But my assistant stopped putting things in it or taking things out years ago. I just looked, my inbox still has papers there from 2015. My outbox is empty though.
---
### Author:  [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/47 "2021-06-11T16:48:42Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#):
>
> I still hear accounts on the news about someone “filming” with their phone.
I’ve occasionally heard people use “videoing” for this. Somehow that sounds more awkward than the anachronistic term “filming.”
---
### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/48 "2021-06-11T16:52:40Z")
How about just ‘recording’? At one time that might have been thought of as only recording audio, but I think these days the default is video.
---
### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/49 "2021-06-11T16:58:09Z")
I still refer to a collection of songs that were released at the same time by a band or musician under a collective title as an ‘album’.
I don’t know if that’s an anachronism though-- the word ‘album’ may evoke a plastic grooved spinning disk for some people, but there are other types of albums, such as a photo album, so I think album may in general apply to a somehow related collection of similar things.
Let’s see…from Merriam-Webster:
## Definition of _album_
1a **:** a book with blank pages used for making a collection (as of autographs, stamps, coins, or photographs)
b **:** a cardboard container for a phonograph record **:** [JACKET](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jacket)
c **:** one or more recordings (as on tape or disc) produced as a single unita 2-CD album
2 **:** a collection usually in book form of literary selections, musical compositions, or pictures **:** [ANTHOLOGY](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anthology)
---
### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/50 "2021-06-11T17:02:55Z")
I seem to remember that “album” for a collection of songs came from the shellac days, when a collection of more than the usual two songs on two sides of a shellac 7 inch was released on multiple discs in a box as an album.
---
### Author:  [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/51 "2021-06-11T17:04:47Z")
I doubt steamroller is a British-ism, as in German they are called _Dampfwalzen_, _Dampf_ being steam and _Walze_ being a roller (also called a roller compactor or a road roller, Wikipedia explains). Spanish is more to the point: _aplanadora_, that is, flattener.
Or apisonadora, which seems more difficult to translate literally
---
### Author:  [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/52 "2021-06-11T17:10:50Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#):
>
> The universal gesture for “hey, you, open your car window!” is still “make a loose fist and move it in circles.” (Probably because the more accurate “point downward with your index finger” would just get you funny looks.)
I’m not familiar with either of those, and I’m quite old enough to remember the cranks and how annoying they were, especially at a tollbooth [those are going away too!] on a rainy day.
Anyway, my gesture is to hold my hand out flat and horizontal, palm facing down, and slowly move it downward.
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/53 "2021-06-11T17:16:15Z")
As to “rolling down” car windows, I find lowering my window and leaning out towards whoever I want to speak to gets the message across just fine.
> [@Pardel-Lux](#):
>
> Or apisonadora, which seems more difficult to translate literally
IANA Spanish speaker much.
AIUI, _Pista_ is more or less “road”. So is this perhaps a “road maker” or “road making machine”?
By analogy in English we have the term “road grader” for a machine that planes and slopes dirt. it’s used for lots more tasks than making roadbeds, but still has the “road” burned into the colloquial name. I hear the the pros call them just “graders”.
As to “steamroller” in English I hear and use “pavement roller” or “asphalt roller” nowadays. I don’t think I’d say “steamroller” as a first choice unless I just wasn’t thinking.
---
### Author:  [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/54 "2021-06-11T17:21:47Z")
No, I believe _pista_ is the wrong ethymology here, _apisonadora_ rather stems from either _piso_ or _pisar_, _piso_ being ground (like the one you stand on, then it would be a grounder) and pisar being the verb to step on (so a stepper? Does not sound snappy to me).
---
### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/55 "2021-06-11T17:26:56Z")
> [@griffin1977](#):
>
> It struck me the other day while pointing out diggers to my 3-year-old daughter (a huge source of excitement on any car ride) that I have no idea of a non-anachronistic way to refer to a “Steamroller”.
I’m reminded of an exchange I heard on a morning radio program here in Chicago, probably a couple of decades ago, now. The DJs were talking to a listener who had called in, and when they asked him what he did for a living, he said (in a classic Chicago accent), “I drive da schmoodah.” This, of course, led the DJs to ask, “What’s a ‘schmoodah’?” “Ya know, when dey put down new ashphalt (sic), I drive da machine dat schmoods out da ashphalt. Da schmoodah!”
---
### Author:  [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/56 "2021-06-11T17:31:44Z")
According to wikipedia, the earliest use of “record album” referred to a bound collection of empty record sleeves, that you could use to store your 78s. In the 1930s they began issuing collections of 78s by a single performer, or in a particular type of music, in these kind of albums. I quote: “Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album.”
A collection of songs on a single disc being called an “album” evolved from that.
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/57 "2021-06-11T17:35:02Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#):
>
> No, I believe _pista_ is the wrong ethymology here, _apisonadora_ rather stems from either _piso_ or _pisar_, _piso_ being ground (like the one you stand on, then it would be a grounder) and pisar being the verb to step on (so a stepper? Does not sound snappy to me).
Thanks for the correction. As I said, my Spanish is long long ago and not real big even back then.
Some machines used to put the finishing touches on the face of materials are generically called “surfacers”. Maybe the machine is smoothing (or texturing) something goopy like concrete or plaster. Or maybe it’s grinding something down like glass or metal or wood to a certain flatness and controlled thickness.
Perhaps “surfacer” is the conceptual equivalent in English. The _apisonadora_ is a machine that stomps heavily on the ground to make it a usable surface. The useful outcome being the result of its “footprint” smooshing the ground to the desired shape.
---
### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/58 "2021-06-11T17:39:56Z")
Some people will insist a record album must have multiple sleeves and records, sometimes allowing the fold out type that only has one record and a solid piece of cardboard on the other side. They’re wrong of course.
---
### Author:  [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/59 "2021-06-11T17:40:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Perhaps “surfacer” is the conceptual equivalent in English.
Yes, that is what it does, but it is still called anachronistically. All I wanted to say is that it is not a British-ism, but an anachronism it is. Still you can do nice things with them, like [street art](https://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/var/albums/Europe/European_Artists/Banksy/Banksy%20steamroller%20warden.jpg?m=1305955653).
---
### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/60 "2021-06-11T18:03:59Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Perhaps “surfacer” is the conceptual equivalent in English. The _apisonadora_ is a machine that stomps heavily on the ground to make it a usable surface. The useful outcome being the result of its “footprint” smooshing the ground to the desired shape.
They do surface, but but more of the job of the generic road roller is compacting. Asphalt and concrete may be compacted and surfaced in one step, but dirt, gravel, and the many types of construction mixes are often rolled with knobbed rollers. Any of the uses may also involve reciprocating stompers as you call them, and also vibration in combination with the other options.
So ‘surfacer’ is off the point, and would include other types of surfacing devices that cut or grind.
My Spanish is minimal but using a well know online translator you can see that ‘apisonadora’ is idiomatic.
\*apison := ram
\*apisona := tamps
\*apisonad := tamps down
\*apisonado := rammed
\*apisonador := rammer
\*apisonadora := roller
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009.md?page=2)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009.md?page=4)