Well, take a closer look (or just a look) at their logo. 
Clockwise began with the sundial, not the mechanical dial clock.
While watching a rerun of “The Outer Limits”, I wondered how many people still understand “We control the horizontal and the vertical”. When is the last time they made a TV set with all of the fiddly controls that used to be standard? NTSC is due to officially die in 2009, it had a long and successful run.
According to wikipedia “byzantium” is a “historiographical term” used by nineteenth century historians to describe the Eastern Roman empire and not a term ever used by its inhabitants. Constantinople was the name of its capital and the term used by the inhabitants at the time.
- Robardin’s Spouse
People still ‘ring’ things into registers, yet very few registers still make any kind of a ringing noise.
“Type” is a piece of molded or shaped metal that is coated with ink and pressed against a page, not the printed character it creates.
They might have “officially” changed their names, but if you go to a place like Mumbai or Chennai, you’ll find that among the natives, the old name is more commonly used. The people of Varanasi are still more likely to use “Banaras” in casual speech, and that name was changed 50 years ago!
Oops. :smack:
Say, you wouldn’t happen to own/run a Bistro would you?
Cite for that last one? I always assumed it came from windfall fruit, meaning something good that drops in your lap without you having to go and pick it.
Hmm, you know, I don’t remember where I read this originally, but a quick Googling for “windfall nautical term” turns up a number of references, like this site:
http://www.brianberlin.net/nautical_phrases.asp
Which also lists several other common phrases as nautical in origin, such as “take <x> down a peg” and “chew the fat”.
While any list this long of etymological origins probably contains a fair number of suspect, bogus or outright speculative entries, these do seem to pass at least my own “smell test”.
ETA: I do find the “fruit falling from a tree on its own” etymology rather more likely than the nautical one.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the “fruit” derivation is the correct one.
They might have “officially” changed their names, but if you go to a place like Mumbai or Chennai, you’ll find that among the natives, the old name is more commonly used. The people of Varanasi are still more likely to use “Banaras” in casual speech, and that name was changed 50 years ago!
[/QUOTE]
Yes and NYC finally gave up (after how many decades) and has posted “6th Ave.” signs underneath the “Avenue of the Americas” signs, a name that no one ever uses. They will eventually give up, I predict.
I am also not fond of all the “Fashion Ave.” and other such signs, since how is a visitor to know that that is really 7th Ave?
While it’s true that people at the time probably didn’t call the empire the “Byzantine Empire”, Byzantium/Byzantion was the original name of the city to which Constantine moved his capital.
“Log in” itself is often used inaccurately. Just about website aimed at the general public urges you to “log on” when all you really do is type in the URL. You don’t have to enter any identification. I think it’s a holdover from the days any user of a computer had to enter an ID and password.
A couple of other legacy terms related to phones:
Hang up - This originally referred to hanging the earpiece on a hook when a call was finished. There is no hook on a modern phone, but we still hang up (even with cell phones).
Flash - Many office phones have a “flash” button that is used for special features. This goes back to the days of switchboards when, to get the attention of an operator, one would jiggle the hook up and down (see above) which would cause a light on the switchboard to flash on and off.
On many railways, the secondman/observer is the “fireman” still (despite sitting in an air-conditioned cab of a diesel loco). A small railway or a branchline might use the “one engine in steam” principle. Trains still “whistle” despite having had air horns for more than half a century.
No, why are can you think of one with a register that rings? I can think of a few bars with older then dirt ringing registers, but no bistros off the top of my head.
(PS my registers may not be state of the art, but they don’t make any ringing sounds).
The other day on the subway in Busan, someone’s cell phone rang, with a ring-tone of the traditional telephone ring. Everyone on the car stopped talking and looked towards the ringing phone to see who had such an odd thing.
My supervising co-teacher here still uses scissors and real glue to do that. She is a bit skittish regarding computers so she prints what she thinks she’ll need and then does the traditional C&P. The other four of us in the office have tried to teach her how easy it is to use the word processors but to no avail.
I’ve got that on my mobile phone. I love it.
That’s another one. The traditional striker-on-brass-bells sound of a road/rail grade crossing is still always there, but these days it’s often an MP3!
Pretty much everything having to do with computers. The whole computer world is just a virtual environment where we have to use old real-world words to describe it.
Boot is short for bootstrap ( I think). There is ‘windows’, ‘files’, ‘folders’, ‘tabs’, etc…