Another to say that I’ve heard the phrase “shelter in place” all my life.
First in Charleston regarding people who were too stubborn to leave during evacuation times and had to stay in place during hurricanes, and later during every single tornado drill ever. We didn’t practice lockdowns or shelter-in-places for gunmen, but the concept was established for protection from the elements - I can’t see it being difficult to extend that concept logically to protection from “hostile elements” as well.
I’ve heard it during maybe the last few years, in the wake of college shootings. I think we are supposed to designate a room with no windows where we can all go but we haven’t done that. There is a poster in the break room with what to do in various scenarios but it was basically pinned up there with no training included. :rolleyes:
Our police force on campus has had us run “shelter in place” drills for a number of years now. I thought it was a commonly-understood term.
Isn’t it also a term found in survival guides in relation to shipwrecks and downed aircraft? “Shelter in place” means to stay near your wrecked craft so that rescuers can more easily find you.
Thanks to all. I wonder if it’s just me, then, who found the phrase so unnecessarily government speak, or perhaps other NYC’ers do also.
Also, I don’t know enough English grammar, but the verb of “shelter” I’ve seen, and examples of which have been given, are all transitive. Intransitive usage here is unique for the word, I still think.
Or it could be parsed, painfully, as “shelter [oneself]” with the object understood/omitted. I’d like to see the grammatical description for that.
Also, the EAS “system” was invoked by Boston government or not? Famously, and bizarrely, to my mind, it was not in NYC on 9/11.
All the years of those tests monentarily freezing my heart in terror–honestly–with that horrible test signal. People under a certain age probably have never heard it.
Leo Bloom, the test signals are still broadcast here once a week. Do you not hear them any more? Maybe you are not listening to the radio/television in the daytime, since that is when they occur here. When I was working I never heard them.
True. I can understand though that for those of us in the Hurricane belt or Tornado Alley it’s more of a routine part of life.
nm. I see there’s a thread on the legality of the lockdown.
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I parse it as “take shelter where you are” (e.g., under our desks) rather than trying to leave the office or the building in the face of a threat.
[QUOTE=Leo Bloom]
All the years of those tests monentarily freezing my heart in terror–honestly–with that horrible test signal. People under a certain age probably have never heard it.
[/QUOTE]
I miss that alert tone. The EAS signal just sounds like someone’s trying to broadcast a modem handshake. I realize the EAS signal is actually data, but “brap, brap, bragagalaggala, brap” just doesn’t have that hair-raising effect that the EBS tone did.
And I used to live almost within the Concord Naval Weapons Station, and was in smelling distance of various refineries, so SIP (shelter in place) was definitely in our vocabulary.
I await the release of The Rolling’s Stones new single: Gimme Shelter in Place.
Just checked a few online dictionaries - all four of them include shelter as an intransitive verb meaning “to take cover” or “to take shelter.”
My OED has cites back to the 1600s.
I’ve moved around a lot…anywhere in hurricane/tornado/chemical plant country frequently do these drills. They usually test the sirens you can hear all throughout a county on the last Wednesday of the month in these areas too. No clue why it’s the last Wednesday but its been the case in several states I’ve lived in.
Cites as the intransitive?
Thanks for the research.
In California we have “Shelter OUT of Place” alerts when there is an earthquake. These warnings are not broadcast via TV, radio, or internet, but instead by your walls and floors putting themselves on “vibrate”. 
Hmmmm… one city I lived in in tornado country tested the sirens weekly–every Friday at 11AM. In San Francisco they also sound the sirens weekly–every Tuesday at noon.
Well, I’ll chime in as never having heard the term before. And I have heard emergency broadcasts before (albeit not recently since I haven’t had cable in forever). I don’t remember a special term. They just said for you to seek shelter nearby and not to go out.
I also think intransitive usage of the verb “shelter” seems awkward, but only by itself. It does not seem awkward in the “shelter in ___” construction. Or with any other preposition. I’ve definitely heard of “sheltering under covers,” for instance.
William I introduced ‘Shelter in Place’ in 1068. It applied to Saxons.
A. Many times.
B. No
C. The opposite of ‘proceed to a bomb/storm shelter.’