Obsolete phrases

[cactuswatcher]

from Language Log http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=29730

From a reader:

I just noticed this headline in our local news (which I read on line

Comments

[londonkds]

Many people outside North America still do drive cars with manual gearboxes.

The same effect exists in IT - how many programs and operating systems still use a floppy disc as the "save" icon, when they've hardly been used for years?

[dlgood]

For a generation of users who wouldn't recognize a floppy disk if they saw one...

[cactuswatcher]

Yep, there is one of those videos in which kids are shown things beyond their experience out there that features a child-baffling eight-inch floppy disk. Why did we keep calling them floppies when they became covered with hard plastic instead of paper and didn't flop around anymore? (Yes, I do, indeed, have some notion of why.)

[atpo_onm]

"Dial" is also still used for a radio dial, as in the expression "Don't touch that dial!" or "Your dial is currently set to... (frequency, station ID), etc."

Never thought about it until you brought up the subject, but the origin of that most likely goes back to when (now very antique) radio tuning indicators were all-but universally round, because it was the easiest way to connect them to the tuning capacitor inside, the plates of which rotate as it's tuned to a given frequency. Also, many or these early radios had a generally vertical profile rather than the horizontal ones they evolved into later on, and a horizontal dial would look a bit odd on them

[cactuswatcher]

Yes, my family had a classic 1930s tube radio in a wood case with shortwave bands and the knob that connected to both the round, lighted dial and a rotary variable capacitor on the inside.

Just checking the dictionary, 'dial' technically refers to the graduated display, so even watches these days frequently don't actually have a dial any more.

[atpo_onm]

'Dial' technically refers to the graduated display, so even watches these days frequently don't actually have a dial any more.

Yup. And in one of those "there's only 20 people in the world" aspects, my father worked most of his life for the Hamilton Watch company here in Lancaster, PA, and some years before the company was acquired by the Swiss they introduced what back then was a revolutionary product.

http://www.oldpulsars.com/

My mother, sister and I bought one for my dad, which I eventually inherited and still have, although I don't wear it (or any watch, for that manner). It is truly a very pretty thing in its gold case and dark red windowed LED display. It was pricey, which is why dad, who was a mite frugal when it came to his own desires, didn't get one for himself, although he very much wanted one.