# 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:** 7
### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/121 "2021-06-14T16:51:02Z")
I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “clicker” at all, except for a particular insect.
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/122 "2021-06-14T17:51:58Z")
Here’s one that may become common in the future, although I’ve come across it a couple times already: refering to the accelerator pedal on an EV as the gas pedal. Or maybe it was saying “hit the gas” for accelerating an EV. I don’t remember the exact phrases I’ve read, but definitely using “gas” to refer to acceleration/accelerator.
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/123 "2021-06-14T17:57:08Z")
“I’m sure the manual will indicate which lever is the velocitator and which the deceleratrix.”
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### Author:  [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/124 "2021-06-14T18:03:29Z")
My understanding is that unless you need sudden, server deceleration, the same pedal/lever is used for both.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/125 "2021-06-14T19:13:28Z")
> [@dtilque](#):
>
> Here’s one that may become common in the future, although I’ve come across it a couple times already: refering to the accelerator pedal on an EV as the gas pedal. Or maybe it was saying “hit the gas” for accelerating an EV. I don’t remember the exact phrases I’ve read, but definitely using “gas” to refer to acceleration/accelerator.
Good one!
Although part of the problem is that “accelerator” is a crappy name for the pedal even on a conventional ICE/diesel. So it never caught on. Simultaneously too high falutin’ for the proles and too technically wrong for the enginerds.
In aviation we’ve used “throttle” for years as the name for the power controls of jet engines. Which are not “throttles” in any engineering sense of the word and never have been. The term carried over from piston engines where “throttle” was an apt engineering term.
The now-approved term “thrust lever(s)” just screams corporate bureaucrat-speak. So is mostly used mockingly by the rank and file poking fun at the training folks required to use the official terminology.
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### Author:  [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/126 "2021-06-14T19:24:37Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Although part of the problem is that “accelerator” is a crappy name for the pedal even on a conventional ICE/diesel. So it never caught on.
It didn’t? I don’t think I’ve ever called that pedal anything else.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/127 "2021-06-14T19:37:38Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> The term carried over from piston engines where “throttle” was an apt engineering term.
It’s been a long time, but when I was a kid on the farm, every tractor, combine, and every other piece of equipment with an engine had a throttle.
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### Author:  [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/128 "2021-06-14T20:59:57Z")
My wife calls it the “foot feed”, which goes back to when throttles became foot activated and differentiated by the original ones done by hand on the steering column. What decade did that happen?
[foot feed - Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foot_feed#:~:text=foot%20feed%20)(plural%20foot%20feeds,the%20column%20to%20the%20floor…
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/129 "2021-06-14T21:04:51Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> The term carried over from piston engines where “throttle” was an apt engineering term.
Only for gasoline engines, really. Throttling in the sense of grabbing someone’s throat and constricting it is an old word, and an apt analogy for the butterfly valve mechanism used to restrict airflow on a gas engine. But diesels (generally) don’t control power this way; they regulate the amount of fuel going in. So it’s not very accurate for them, either.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/130 "2021-06-14T21:56:27Z")
> [@Railer13](#):
>
> It’s been a long time, but when I was a kid on the farm, every tractor, combine, and every other piece of equipment with an engine had a throttle.
Folks who race cars call the “gas pedal” the “throttle” even today.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/131 "2021-06-14T22:36:53Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#):
>
> “I’m sure the manual will indicate which lever is the velocitator and which the deceleratrix.”
“You there, fill it up with petroleum distillate, and re-vulcanize my tires - posthaste!”
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/132 "2021-06-14T23:20:59Z")
> [@Rilchiam](#):
>
> So in the entire history of automobiles, no one has ever “driven” a car. They’ve steered it and accelerated it, but never driven it, because the power is **not** out front, having to be goaded forward, as with an animal-drawn vehicle.
Back in the day, driving the truck was physical labor: parking would leave me in a sweat, and using the brake was a workout. I don’t ‘drive’ my car now, but I’ve always thought there was ‘driving’ involved in the old vehicles: the mother of one of my friends had her arm broken by steering-wheel kickback. Perhaps ‘driving’ was more of an anthropomorphism than an anachronism?
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/133 "2021-06-15T16:25:56Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> “Ah, this is where we came in!.”
We used that in my family, and by extension too, when we found ourselves in some all-too-familiar unpleasant situation, or when all-too-familiar anecdote was being trotted out again.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/134 "2021-06-15T18:22:09Z")
What I see here is a common fallacy about words, that’s the original meaning has some sort of special status.
It doesn’t. Words evolve and often their current meaning is cut loose from the original meaning. That’s why you can orient yourself by the North Star, when "orient’ originally meant “east.” It’s why left handers are called “southpaws,” even if they aren’t baseball pitchers. The bullpen was originally a place to keep bulls, then it was a place in a baseball stadium outside the playing field, then it was where relief pitchers waited and warmed up, then it was the relief pitchers collectively, and it moved away from baseball to become a place where workers waited for assignments.
A car was originally a wagon, then various other devices that moved – elevator cars, railroad cars, the passenger part of a balloon, and finally an automobile.
A mouse was a rodent, then a computer imput device because the wire made it look like a mouse’s tail. But now there are wireless mice that no longer resemble the rodent.
Finding examples of this are trivial in the extreme.
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/135 "2021-06-15T21:59:39Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> What I see here is a common fallacy about words, that’s the original meaning has some sort of special status.
>
> It doesn’t. Words evolve and often their current meaning is cut loose from the original meaning.
This is true for many terms, and several that have been brought up in this thread, but there are some hoary old terms that still persist for now, but I doubt will evolve to remain in future usage with updated meanings. For instance, two of the terms I used in my OP, ‘ice box’ and ‘tinfoil’ I don’t think are going to come around to being word replacements for their modern equivalents.
Others, like ‘dialing’ a phone number may last, and dialing may come to mean ‘inputting a series of numbers’ rather than ‘turning a round dial on a rotary phone’. I’d say that one is probably already pretty much there.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/136 "2021-06-15T22:08:24Z")
Yeah, there’s not always a clear line between (among?) anachronisms, metaphors, idioms, and words that evolve and acquire new meanings over time.
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### Author:  [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/137 "2021-06-15T22:08:44Z")
> [@tavaritz](#):
>
> (Little hijack) I wouldn’t compare those two as one is based on an existing item and the other is an abstraction. The broken circle means open circuit, whereas a circle with a dot inside means closed circuit. Eg. Off and on.
I always thought the circle with the line in it was a representative of ‘1’ and ‘0’, the on and off states of a bit… I’ve seen rocker switches where the “on” setting was designated by a 1 and the off by a 0.
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/138 "2021-06-15T23:10:19Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> 1 and the off by a 0.
I think the circle symbols are abstractions of an abstraction, were selected for ease of manual drafting (there is an anachronism), and are a subset of the valve-open valve-closed symbols. The 1 and 0 abstractions are less remote from their origins: the 1 represents a through line, and the 0 … doesn’t.
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### Author:  [@tavaritz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tavaritz)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2021, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/139 "2021-06-16T05:11:16Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> I always thought the circle with the line in it was a representative of ‘1’ and ‘0’, the on and off states of a bit… I’ve seen rocker switches where the “on” setting was designated by a 1 and the off by a 0.
I can clearly see where the confusion comes when I look at this computer I’m using now. It’s an Acer built tower machine and on top of it is a button with lighted icon of a circle that is broken on top by a bar eg. an off-switch. It is inoperative as I’ve deactivated it’s function as an off-switch.
I have a software icon on my desktop with the same icon and if I click it I get a window with five buttons with following pictures
:
1. A lock. Undestandably that locks the computer.
2. A waning crescent moon. For hibernation.
3. A clockface with zetas coming out to upper right. Say the same thing as 2. but differs somehow. Never used it so don’t know.
4. Rays coming out from center. Re-start.
5. A bar in a circle. Off.
First four ar in green and the last is red.
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### Author:  [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2021, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronisms-that-persist/944009/140 "2021-06-16T15:15:00Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#):
>
> Only for gasoline engines, really. Throttling in the sense of grabbing someone’s throat and constricting it is an old word, and an apt analogy for the butterfly valve mechanism used to restrict airflow on a gas engine
Gas engines can even be throttled and choked.
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