Why we 'Say Uncle' and mysterious sayings of the future

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Earlier threads on this here have traced saying ‘uncle’ as a way of acknowledging you’ve been defeated to two main theories. 1) Back in roman days boys would say something that translated to ‘uncle, my best uncle’ as a way of admitting the other was superior to himself and 2) it’s a corruption of an Irish word that is a call for protection.

Apparently the use of the phrase arose in America somewhere right around 1900, which has always made me suspicious. Why should American children suddenly start using a corrupted Irish word? One that apparently kids in Ireland itself didn’t use in that contest? And why a sudden outbreak of Latin knowledge among scuffling boys?

But yesterday I came across another theory that makes more sense to me, and amuses me. Apparently there was an English periodical and just around 1900 one of the bits and pieces published in it was a joke about a man who had bought a marvelous parrot. He was showing off its skill at mimicry to his friends, and became aggravated when the parrot wouldn’t repeat back ‘uncle.’ Supposedly he started beating on the parrot, screaming “Say Uncle, you beggar,” but the parrot wouldn’t. The man threw the parrot into a cage that also held a dozen chickens. When he checked later, he found that eleven of the chickens were dead, and the parrot was attacking the remaining chicken while screaming 'Say Uncle, you beggar!"

Anyway, this amuses me. The idea being that some children read, or were told, this joke and found it funny, and adopted it as a saying in their own fights. And that the source of the saying vanished from common knowledge while the saying lived on.

I bet this sort of thing is happening all the time, especially now with all the media exposure we have. You hear a phrase that amuses you, in a movie or TV show or a commercial or maybe a song lyric, and adopt it because it conveys your feelings about some minor type situation that arises.

How many of these phrases will live on long past anyone knowing where they came from?

Long in the future will some baffled Straight Doper post a thread asking, “Why do we say ‘Have fun storming the castle?’” and someone eventually replies, 'Well, two centuries ago there were these things called movies, and one of them was called…"

So, what are your nominees for sayings that will last past general knowledge of their source?

2

Technological terms, like “dialing” a phone.

3

“Clicker” for the TV remote (The early ones actually clicked and changed the channel by the sound).

4

“Wind up”. Being “wound up”. This is well understood today as referring to the spring in a clockwork mechanism, but there’s not a lot of clockwork around these days

5

“Step on the gas” won’t make much sense if EVs end up becoming dominant.

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My kid needed a car to do rounds at hospitals, so I lent him my all-manual sports car. It worked out great; the stick shift meant none of her friends asked to borrow it, and the manual everything else was amusing…

One friend could NOT find the switch to close the passenger’s window, and when told to rotate the handle, did so with glee: “Now I know why people say ‘CRANK the window up’!”

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“Hang up” the phone. Landline phones with an actual cradle for the handset are already becoming rare.

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Not a modern one, but a much older example, which is already meaningless to people today.

From Charles MacKay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds 91841) :

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Wikipedia.

That said, “quoz” was an actual, though obscure, word:

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At some time, people will give a blank stare when they hear of someone “McGuyvering” (improvising a solution for) a problem.

Lots of people are mystified by “Rube Goldberg machine” already.

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“Taping” when actual tape is no longer used for sound or video recording.

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Again, even if a lot of Americans (like me) still get “Rube Goldberg device”, they’re probably already mystified by “Heath Robinson device”. Heath Robinson was a cartoonist in the UK who did the same sort of wacky improbable inventions, but was doing is much earlier (“Heath Robinson machine” was in dictionaries by 1912, says Wikipedia. Goldberg started well over a decade later.

In fact, the Wikipedia page on “Rube Goldberg Machine” gives lots of names for such devices around the world

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“Newspaper”. Printed papers are in decline. How long before they disappear entirely?

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“News”??? That’s on its way out too :stuck_out_tongue:

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I"m not so sure of that. “Taping” has two syllables. “Video recording” has five. I"ll bet “taping” lasts, just like the little icon of a floppy disc is still on every word processing program.

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Or you just say ‘record’. If you’re talking about something on TV (and everyone has a DVR), I’m not sure the ‘video’ part is necessary.

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“Screw the pooch”.

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I think the point is that the word “taping” will survive, long past the time when anyone has a clue what it means.

Along similar lines, “footage” refers to how many feet of film you have of an event. And, heck, “film” itself is now mostly obsolete, and at 50 or more frames per second, “flicks” don’t really flicker any more, either.

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We’ve had threads and threads on sayings and catchphrases your parents used that you don’t or ones that you’ve had to explain to your kids or other younger folks.

Most haven’t gotten to the point where the origin is totally obscured by the mists of time, but many are used by lots more people today than know the origin. Those may only be a generation or two away from being orphaned.

I’d suggest that the current world, with the internet recording everything, may create fewer orphans not more. The ephemera of 1900-1960 OTOH, may well be the main source of such things for centuries to come. “Where’s the beef?” may well outlast Wendy’s. It’s certainly outlasted the old lady who made it famous.