Don’t touch that dial! We’ll be right back.
Yes, it wasn’t floppy like a 5.25", but we called it a floppy disk to differentiate it from a hard disk drive which used (uses) hard platters, so it still made sense and calling it a hard disk would have been confusing (and wrong). Of course at that point you’d be asking someone if they saved it on the 3.5 or the 5.25.
I would just go with semantic shift.
I haven’t heard ‘dial’ a phone or ‘hang up’ for a long long time. Now it’s just ‘call’ a number or ‘cut off, break off, disconnect’ from some one.
And anyway, even in my generation, the only people who talk on the phone instead of text are talking to even older people who don’t text.
What hasn’t change is that we still ‘write’ a novel or email. Really, except for me, who writes anything? We type it. But ‘typing’ is culturally a lower level mechanical skill. ‘Writing’ is intellectual, creative. So the distinction lives. (I have to say though, at work, when I’m asked to write a paper, I refer to ‘banging it out’–which may have overtones I’m not aware of.)
I have a theory, not as silly as that of the brontosaurus but nearly, because I invented it not three minutes ago, that word anachronisms were unknown, or, at least, very rare, until the industrial revolution.
Setting sail, as in the aircraft carrier set sail yesterday, might be among the oldest.
When was the last time anyone created a novel by setting up movable type on a printing press?
I love “voice dial.”
Some of these probably qualify as fixed expressions. Usually, fixed expressions in a language are expressions that are not predictable from the plain meaning of the words, like appliances “running,” in English. Even turning things “on” is a fixed expression in English, even though the switch sometimes literally lays one piece of metal over another, because first of all, not all switches work that way, and second, not all languages speak of turning lights on. Some ESL people from various countries speak of “opening” and “closing” lights.
“Hanging up” a phone used to be something you did literally, but people still use the expression with cell phones. However, to say that it is not a fixed expression, and merely an archaism, you’d have to show that other languages either also use the literal equivalent of “hang up,” or else use a literal expression, for example, the same expression they use to indicate turning off any appliance. But if you can find examples in other countries of different archaic expressions for ending a phone conversation (say, some other language speaks of “setting down” the phone, when they mean pressing the disconnect button), then you have a true fixed expression in “hanging up.”
I would guess that a lot of fixed expressions began as archaisms. I’m sure “sending” an email, or text, is a fixed expression, because not all languages even use a word equivalent to “send” when talking about ink-&-paper mail.
↑ ↑ ↑ This :smack:
Drives me nuts. If I never heard the correct definition I would be OK … I think. But I do know… 
Lawyers, could you use the incorrect use of this word ‘decimated’ to blow the opposition out of the water.
Better question, are their lawyers out there that don’t know the definition?
I ask law types because the wording is real import to them so as to make sure there is no question what was meant. I assume.
I suppose one day the official definition will be changed to what the talking heads say it is but I will not stop my campaign to educate people about this.
Yes, I like to fight windmills.
The procedure didn’t merely involve the text, but photos, etc., as well. And it wasn’t typewritten, but typeset. And not just paragraphs, but sometimes splicing in individual characters of text. And “taping”? We used rubber cement, or a waxing machine . . . for the entire page, not just to move things.
We did that at work too . . . for several decades.
And when was the last time you heard a phone “ring”? Yes, they used to have little bells in them.
You know, there’s nothing wrong with a word having its roots in older practices and technology, and when the technology changes there’s no need to change the word describing it. Our language is littered with words that are references to older names and practices.
broadcasting, for instance, comes from a method of sowing grain – actually picking up handfuls of seed from a bag slung around your neck and thrown “broad” by hand. In this case it seems pretty likely that the use of the word to describe the practice of sending out radio (or, later, television) signals wasn’t a direct carryover (farmers didn’t change occupations from farming to radio men, taking the term with them), but probably by analogy. It was a clever choice, too. But no one had to invent a neo-classical term from Greek or Latin (or possibly both) to describe the process – they simply adapted an existing word.
I don’t actually speak the language, but I’ve heard that German has a common joke based around the fact that their verb for “dialing” a phone is the same as that used to refer to voting in an election (i.e. making a choice…) and that the verb for hanging up a phone is the same as is used to refer to execution by hanging. Thus, the following joke:
Q: What’s the difference between <politician> and a telephone?
A: Nothing, hang up and dial again (i.e. hang him and vote again).
Can any German speakers confirm?
Many people still have watches that need winding. I’ve just wound mine.
Nitpick: you still need to know hand signals as there can be traffic on the road without indicator lights, like bicycles or horses. And users of those modes of transport need to use hand signals.
Coming back referring to Youtube et al.
I read that due to digital watches, some kids don’t know what ‘clockwise’ means. What other term could be used?
They call it the wire service, because it used to have teletypes and wires, but now it is all dishes and satellites and waves in the air.[/creaky old man voice]
So what are all those teens and tweens doing with their phones in front of them, chatting away for hours? Texting is a poor means of communication.
The “correct” definition has been obsolete since the 19th century. *Word meanings change. *
I am skeptical of this one; the photographic meaning seems to me more likely to be the metaphorical extension.
I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken of anyone being keelhauled, at least not metaphorically.
Doesn’t that itself come from the [television, and by extension the] computer screen being a metaphorical tube?
I think I’ve used the word “metaphor” more in this post than in the past week.
God yes, I’m sick to death of people bringing up “decimate” and proudly pointing out how everybody misuses this word except them. Dictionary says:
dec·i·mate
ˈdesəˌmāt/
verb
verb: decimate; 3rd person present: decimates; past tense: decimated; past participle:decimated; gerund or present participle: decimating
1.
kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.
“the project would decimate the fragile wetland wilderness”
drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something).
“plant viruses that can decimate yields”
2.
historical
kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.
It doesn’t matter that it used to refer to tithing or Roman soldiers- that’s not how the word is used today. Unless you’re teaching a lesson about Roman history.
The sentences you just wrote come out to 146 characters. My phone can send 160 characters in a single text, or do multi-texts for longer messages with ease.
Seems like texting is a perfectly ample means of communication. Same as chat rooms, online forums, and other such new-fangled doo-hickeys.
That would’ve been two more texts. No problem with communication here.