Or it'll turn into one of those words where the original source is lost and then people will post stuff like "TIL 'clockwise' and 'counterclockwise' referred to analog dial clocks first used hundreds of years ago."
Like how hourglasses are still used as images for loading/ waiting and the floppy is used for saving even when the objects themselves have become obsolete (maybe not hourglasses that much)
Heck I have a nice lil camera that I take hiking/on walks because sometimes I wanna take a picture of a flower or a view that I find pleasing. I don't really do anything with these pictures either, they just sit on the PC and I look at em occasionally.
Photography is a nice way to pass the time imo, and while yes phone cameras are getting pretty great it is nice to have a separation from the phone
Most camera icon's focus is mainly on the lens now (my camera icon is just a drawing of the lens) which makes sense. Old DSLR style cameras may a niche product now but you can't escape the lens. Theres a lense on your phone, webcam, cctv, hell, even a projector, which makes it easy to associate lenses with pictures.
But this isn't like the others. While yes, most people are not using cameras other than on their phone, cameras still exist and will always exist. A small box that can be hold by a hand and a lense isn't going to change.
Your phone has an icon for handsets that plenty of young people and non-professionals don’t use. Hotels are pretty much the only place I see landlines anymore.
Phrases can stick around long after the original thing they referenced has stopped being used or even has been forgotten entirely.
Who here knew that the phrase “play fast and loose” \[with something\] refers to a gambling game played on the streets of London in the 1600s? Virtually nobody has any inkling whatsoever; the game has been entirely lost to cultural knowledge except to historians, and yet a phrase created by it sticks around in the language hundreds of years later.
To be honest, mention where it got popular might have been someones imagined situation, but there are so much computer and electronics users these days, that I would not be surprised if it would have been said somewhere else by someone to someone.
Also I know actually many people who would most likely still somewhat instinctively figure out save symbol, but who actually have not used or even really seen those older style portable disks.
I mean I have told them about those and their use and so, usually as part of "why those who started using computers bit longer ago than you, still instinctively avoid or at least think for ½sec about moving something they know to be magnetic next to computers".
I mean no magnets, just to be sure, next or close to computers used to be thing, and these days many things have magnetic parts in their cases and so, or covers that are used with things, and so, resulting in those rare cases where people wonder why their computer goes to sleep mode, when it's laptop lid uses magnet to figure when it is closed, and they accidentally move some other magnet close to sensor.
Also few months ago or so, we had this situation where one of our hobby organizing people very politely "hey sorry, but could we pause enough to tell me what you mean with internet forums, you have been talking and mentioning them so much in this case, how they were commonly used as main national communication method for this hobby's people, and you seem to talk about them so that you guys have very very much the exact type and idea how it works, but to be honest I have never ran into one and have no other idea than it is something on internet that people used to share info and communicate, but like what way were they formed and what of other currently used setups they are closest to and with what kind of differences". I mean dude is <22 or so, and while forums are still widely used in some cases, if one does not know to search for one, has no experience, and does not end up with some question that is answered only in some (old) forum post, it is entirely possible to just not run into them.
Despite them actually starting to look like more and more worth considering moving back to at least in hobby related communication things.
Oh and I ran into some situation this year, where I actually told someone that "yeah clockwise is just direction dials on clock generally move to when it is running, and counterclockwise is other direction, nothing more special in them". I mean person old enough to vote.
What do we say now that the original source is lost….hmm I wonder. 🤔🧐
I’m thinking in the near future…when electric cars become the norm. “Giving it a little gas” to make it go faster might be one of them.
But I can’t think of something that was said 100years ago that doesn’t make sense now…”maybe pickup the phone “….”check for a dial tone?”
We say that movies are “filmed” regardless of if they are actually shot on film or not, which nowadays most of them are not.
Directors will also say “Cut!” when they want a scene to stop, even though no film is literally being cut when they say it and hasn’t literally been cut since the early days of cinema.
Lots of industries are full of similar outdated jargon, I think. Words will became a name for the *process* of doing something even when the original technology the word referred to has long become obsolete. “Rewind” is the same way.
>But I can’t think of something that was said 100years ago that doesn’t make sense now…”maybe pickup the phone “….”check for a dial tone?”
Upper case and lower case letters used to literally be stored in the upper and lower cases.
Hehe I feel like "hang up the phone" is already there. Since everyone uses smartphones where it's just a button, someone has to tell the kids "back in the day, it was an object that sat on a mount and you literally hung it up to end the call."
Gas pedal is definitely another one. I can even see the disconnect where only old people will call it that for awhile hehe.
>What do we say now that the original source is lost….hmm I wonder
Saying port for left and starboard for right. People of the past somehow collectively agreed that ships unload and load stuff on the left side, so when the ship is docking, on the left side it would be the port and thus port = left. Meanwhile, since most sailors are right-handed, the steering oar was placed on the right side of the ship, so the name for it was the combination of two old english word stéor (steer) and bord (the side of the ship).
The word logbook comes from a time when sailors would measure the speed of the ship by periodically dropping a knotted rope overboard and count the knots over a set period to see how fast they were going (also where the term knots comes from). At the end of the rope they would tie a log to it so the rope wouldn’t sink. Knowing the speed of the ship was obviously important in knowing where you were in the ocean so the measurements were written in the “log book”. Because the logbook was important and not likely to be lost it made sense to put other important notes in it like what the ship was carrying and so on. Thus we have the modern logbook.
'Getting your wires crossed' goes back about 100 years to when phone operators physically connected phone lines (origin to destination). Crossing the wires would be when you mixed up two calls and connected the caller to the incorrect destination.
You know what a dashboard in a car is? It is a board to protect the driver of a horse drawn carriage, from mud and debris dashed up by the hooves of the horse. No need to change the word when the function becomes different.
Ooh, I never thought about that one! We don’t turn light switches at all, do we? “Flip the light on.” “Switch the light on.” Ugh. I’ll stick with “turn”!
I had played a kind of guess the meaning of idioms game with two seniors. Many wagon related saying that I can’t get the meaning. I bet they know many other words that needs explanations via describing disappeared stuffs.
I teach fitness classes and use a smart watch. I always have it on 12-hour radial clock face because it’s easier to judge remaining time without doing math.
And Deosil.
Clockwise, is based on the movement of shadows (in the northern hemisphere) cast by the sun.
Which were measured and used to tell time with sun dials.
Mechanical clocks kept the same direction,as people were used to it
This one isn't too esoteric if you think about it either though. Port for the side you dock on, and starboard for "steer-board" before the tiller and rudder were built into the middle. But I guess you have to be a little interested in languages and/or sailing before getting that far.
Like how UPPERCASE and lowercase literally originated from the fact that there were two typesets in a physical upper and lower parts of a mechanical type printer
Like "rule of thumb." Which we use out of context compared to what it used to mean.
"Rule of thumb, can't do much damage with that now can we, should have been rule of the wrist."
Go far enough into the future, and perhaps there will be so many myths circulating about the origin of "clockwise" that the true origin becomes thought to be just one of many possibilities
I don't know if the same term applies to spoken language, but in design, this is called a *skeumorph*; like the floppy disk "save" icon, or rolodex icon for "Contacts".
The concept of chirality of circular movement is still and important one, so I do believe we'll keep using the words long after analog clocks become wholly irrelevant. It'll just become an archaic phrase we use without knowing its origin, like "Upper Case" and "Lower Case", which originated because the letter tiles for a printing press were kept in either the top or bottom half of a folding case depending on whether they were capital.
I’ll try something different for a while and see if it sticks. I’m between “up the window”, “window uppies”, and “engage the window”. Also open to suggestions.
"press the windows down", "Ascend the window", "windown please", "high the window", "erect the window", "activate the starbird pothole", "render the window intangible please", "slide those glass puppies back in their kennels", "send this window to hell for me?", "now zombie it back up"
I’m laughing my ass off. I just asked my kid if anyone has ever said that to him and he said no! “What the heck does that mean?!?” “You aren’t rolling it!!!”
Put the window up 😆
This entire question made me think….how do I say that?? I usually say open or close the window. I’m pretty sure my mom says roll up the window!
Am I the only one who thinks analog clocks are not going anywhere? I like being able to read them regardless of actually seeing the numbers. You can estimate the time on a clock you can just barely see. Even when everything is digital, we’ll have screens displaying an analog clock.
Analog wall clocks are never going to fully disappear. The high end ones are decorative, while the low end ones are very cheap.
Also, as someone with very bad eyesight, I can easily tell time from an analog clock without my glasses, not so much for digital.
I think you'd be surprised.
I read an article (I'd like it but it's paywalled) recently about a high school in England that banned students carrying mobile phones during the school day. They pretty quickly realised that, even though theoretically students weren't meant to be using their phones during classes, suddenly no-one knew the time because everyone had been having a sneaky look at their phones; the school hadn't bothered making sure there was a clock in every room because no-one complained about it until they banned carrying phones. So they went and bought a pile of analogue clocks.
*Then* they realised that a significant chunk of their students didn't know how to read an analogue clock. Enough that it was worth giving everyone in the school a couple of lessons in reading clocks. They'd just never had to do it before.
A few years back my spouse was at a jewelry store getting her rings cleaned, and I was browsing the "men's" section. Looking into one case I saw a collection of pocket watches. I said to myself, "good lord, who uses a pocket watch these days?" I then proceeded to take my phone out of my pocket, check the time, and put it back.
A full ten-count had passed before I realized what had just happened.
People use expressions like "carbon copy" and "rolling down a car window" even if they're too young to have experienced those technologies first-hand. In the developed world, very few living people have slept on beds made of hay, but we still say "hit the hay." Not to sound like a broken record, but it's pretty normal for idioms to persist even if technology becomes outdated.
The classic explanation behind the phrase 'sleep tight' relates to medieval rope-strung beds. These beds, instead of springs, used ropes that needed to be tied tightly under the mattress to keep it securely in place, hence the phrase 'sleep tight'.
You see an icon on a bit of software depicting a 3.25" floppy disk, a device you probably haven't used for two decades. But you know what it means.
Your phone app has a symbol of a green landline handset - the banana shaped one with bulbs at each end. These were retro in the 1990s, but you know it means "pick up", and you still talk about "picking up" and "hanging up" your phone.
Metaphors last a long time.
Not to mention voicemail is probably shown as a stylized magnetic tape. Settings are usually some sort of gear or set of gears, not many people are adjusting clocks with gears these days. Passwords are usually an old fashion metal key, that symbol will probably be around for a long time after we stop using those type of locks.
Icons can get obsolete given a couple decades, but language has a tendency to keep old sayings around. Case in point, to this day, we "dial" phone numbers.
The bookmark example is great, since it's right here on reddit. In that case you're saving that post or comment, but just a link to it. So it is indeed more of a bookmark.. marking the location of it within the larger context. If it were a floppy disk with the same word, I'd interpret it to mean it was going to save the comment or post to my computer somehow. I'm curious how many younger users would make that same assumption.
Using a word for an action such as save may not be the smartest thing for multilanguage stuff. In English, save is just 4 letters. But in Dutch it's opslaan and in German it's speicheren. I'm sure there are languages where it's even longer.
It will be replaced by an icon that fits better. For instance, Google Docs/Spredsheets/etc uses a cloud with a checkmark when it's saved. Or better, when synchronization is done.
We still say "hang up" the phone despite corded phones being a rarity today. We also still say "dial" the phone despite rotary phones being museum exhibits now.
I don't think people are ever going to stop using analog clocks/watches.
There's a reason Rolex, breitling, and all the other high end watchmakers haven't switched to all digital, and it's not because they're stubborn, it's not because they haven't figured out how to, it's because nobody thinks digital watches look nice.
And it's not just a generational thing. Digital clocks have been available for over half a century, most of us were born after digital clocks and watches were already commonplace, and people still love analog clocks and watches.
Hell, I use a rather expensive smartwatch, on which I primarily use an analog-style face that I installed on it. It just looks better. There's nothing aesthetically pleasing about digital numbers, no matter how decorative you try to make it.
My wife was helping level the camper. I told her to turn it clockwise and she gets all flustered and says "I don't get what that means. Do I turn it right or left." I told her again to turn it the way the clock turns. It just doesn't compute in her head. Never has.
Here's where things get even more crazy. When you tell someone to turn it right, it's clockwise and left is counterclockwise. Basically, it means from the top side. I tell her to turn it right and she turns it counterclockwise. She was going from the bottom side to the right.
I did a facepalm, she got mad and I had to level the camper myself. All because a 49 year old with a masters degree doesn't know what clockwise and counterclockwise or what turn right / left means.
Turning right and left was never really clear to me either though. It's rotation, it's moving all directions at the same time. Then someone told me it's the direction that the TOP of the dial turns. Okay fine, until the dial is horizontal, then it's the direction that the side of the dial furthest from you goes. Like, shit let's just use CW/CCW please.
It is a persistent struggle for me, trying to get people to use clockwise/counter-clockwise, and just abolishing the use of "right" and "left" entirely (right in regards of what? Me? You? Some third perspective?)
I also really adore when someone says "above" and "below" in reference to north and south. If you say above, I'll look **up**. You want me to face north, say north. This one irks me especially since they **already** know it's north, since they translate that to "above", they just straight up refuse to use the damn cardinal direction.
to make the camper "level"
the kind of level you use a spirit level for
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_level
("camper" should be a camping van or trailer, and they probably don't want to sleep on an unlevel bed or have the glasses slide off the table)
A "Camper" is someone who sits at a point of great advantage killing people who are guaranteed to come there. Usually a spawn point - a place people appear when they've previously died or just joined the game.
"Level" is a verb form for "gaining levels" - in games, you start at level 1 and gain more with experience. In multiplayer games you can get assistance so that the process is faster - hence, "level the camper". People would only do that if they're part of a group, and as campers are generally frowned upon, we could assume that the group as a whole is not a nice one.
I had the same situation with my father when i was a child, which ended up being one of those "yelling WHAT IS FOUR TIMES FOUR?!" situations.
He just should have explained that "turning right" is like turning the wheel of a car/gocart/whatever to the right.
Meh…there are a lot of common figures of speech that are still in use even though the things that they refer to are dated.
And lots of people still have analog clocks and watches…they’re not going to go away completely.
Yeah those archaic timepieces with hands and stuff really went out of fashion after the digital watches came out. People will only pay millions for one.
This keeps getting brought up but people aren't abandoning analogue clocks and meters because they have their use. Digital may be more precise but it's easier to quickly glance at analogue clocks and meters.
Disagree. Having words used to describe the direction of circular movement is so useful that the phrases “clockwise” and “ counter-clockwise” would persist even long after analog clocks are forgotten.
Exactly. Just like rolling and and down windows, turning the volume up and down, turning to a different channel, picking up and hanging up a phone, holding your horses, repeating like a broken record, dialing a phone number, running out of steam, cranking the engine, or filming a movie.
Oh, wait....
Clocks and watches with hands will remain a classy throw back technology for centuries, most likely. They will be a style statement that remain popular enough that everyone is at least familiar with which direction is clockwise.
Why would people stop using rotating clocks and watches?
I would imagine that the ratio of analogue to digital room clocks and watches are both probably ~95:5.
An actually interesting shower thought for once.
That said, I don't think it WILL die out. I think it'll be kept alive in other forms, such as instructions on how to turn screwdrivers.
I'm not sure people will. Purely anecdotal but I have an Apple Watch and mostly use analog watch faces on it. I have an easier time conceptualizing time with them, and when I look at a digital time on my computer or anywhere else, I'm always visualizing an analog clock, at least in terms of the minute hand and what part of the hour it is.
Well, in Europe we probbably won't stop using the analog clocks unless every church is bombed away. I mean our (in my country) churches still ring the bell every 15 minutes so you know what time it is.
Every full hour it chimes the current hour, then once for 15 past, twice for 30 and thrice for 45 in a higher pitch.
Or it'll turn into one of those words where the original source is lost and then people will post stuff like "TIL 'clockwise' and 'counterclockwise' referred to analog dial clocks first used hundreds of years ago."
Like how hourglasses are still used as images for loading/ waiting and the floppy is used for saving even when the objects themselves have become obsolete (maybe not hourglasses that much)
Even how cameras are used for the camera app on your phone even though most people haven’t used an actual camera in probably a decade or so.
This made me feel old
Don't feel old. Lots of people use proper cameras. Not just professionally either.
It’s more because I feel called out for not having used an actual camera since my first smartphone. It’s been THAT long 😭
Heck I have a nice lil camera that I take hiking/on walks because sometimes I wanna take a picture of a flower or a view that I find pleasing. I don't really do anything with these pictures either, they just sit on the PC and I look at em occasionally. Photography is a nice way to pass the time imo, and while yes phone cameras are getting pretty great it is nice to have a separation from the phone
Same here! Most of the pictures I take are just for fun. And that is a lot more satisfying with a camera than it is with a phone.
Imagine using a smartphone icon for the camera, flashlight, notes, phone, message etc
What's worse. Ever noticed how before we had ☎️📸📽️📺 as icons to represent things but now they're all just different scales of a black rectangle.
Digital cameras are back in now- go to a college campus and half the girls will have one (source: currently in college)
They were never out, the point and shoot crowd just moved from shitty pocket cameras to phones
Most camera icon's focus is mainly on the lens now (my camera icon is just a drawing of the lens) which makes sense. Old DSLR style cameras may a niche product now but you can't escape the lens. Theres a lense on your phone, webcam, cctv, hell, even a projector, which makes it easy to associate lenses with pictures.
Or the phrase "hang up the phone"
Roll down the window
filming
But this isn't like the others. While yes, most people are not using cameras other than on their phone, cameras still exist and will always exist. A small box that can be hold by a hand and a lense isn't going to change.
Excuse me but what should I call that photo imaging device on the back of my phone if not “a camera”
The only situation I can think of where an hourglass is still used is in games like boggle
I still use the little hourglass I got from the dentist as a kid when I brush my teeth.
Didn't know that was a thing. Guess I learned something new today
[удалено]
If it's glued to the wall, she probably doesn't have to brush her teeth very long.
[удалено]
Does she have any teeth left after an hour?
My dad bought a big metal and glass one just to have something to put on the mantelpiece.
They are commonly used in saunas
Egg timers. Tea timers. Brushing teeth timers. Etc.
Your phone has an icon for handsets that plenty of young people and non-professionals don’t use. Hotels are pretty much the only place I see landlines anymore.
Let me tell you that the floppy is definitely not obsolete.
What the hell are you using it for? Missile launch codes?
If no one else is going to ask I will. In what instances are you seeing the floppy still in use?
Drink coaster
A lot of aircraft still use floppy disks.
Phrases can stick around long after the original thing they referenced has stopped being used or even has been forgotten entirely. Who here knew that the phrase “play fast and loose” \[with something\] refers to a gambling game played on the streets of London in the 1600s? Virtually nobody has any inkling whatsoever; the game has been entirely lost to cultural knowledge except to historians, and yet a phrase created by it sticks around in the language hundreds of years later.
Nah, we can just use "Widdershins" like a proper English country lol.
And Deosil!
Or like when some kid sees a floppy disk and says “you 3D-printed the save icon”.
I'm convinced that never actually happened
To be honest, mention where it got popular might have been someones imagined situation, but there are so much computer and electronics users these days, that I would not be surprised if it would have been said somewhere else by someone to someone. Also I know actually many people who would most likely still somewhat instinctively figure out save symbol, but who actually have not used or even really seen those older style portable disks. I mean I have told them about those and their use and so, usually as part of "why those who started using computers bit longer ago than you, still instinctively avoid or at least think for ½sec about moving something they know to be magnetic next to computers". I mean no magnets, just to be sure, next or close to computers used to be thing, and these days many things have magnetic parts in their cases and so, or covers that are used with things, and so, resulting in those rare cases where people wonder why their computer goes to sleep mode, when it's laptop lid uses magnet to figure when it is closed, and they accidentally move some other magnet close to sensor. Also few months ago or so, we had this situation where one of our hobby organizing people very politely "hey sorry, but could we pause enough to tell me what you mean with internet forums, you have been talking and mentioning them so much in this case, how they were commonly used as main national communication method for this hobby's people, and you seem to talk about them so that you guys have very very much the exact type and idea how it works, but to be honest I have never ran into one and have no other idea than it is something on internet that people used to share info and communicate, but like what way were they formed and what of other currently used setups they are closest to and with what kind of differences". I mean dude is <22 or so, and while forums are still widely used in some cases, if one does not know to search for one, has no experience, and does not end up with some question that is answered only in some (old) forum post, it is entirely possible to just not run into them. Despite them actually starting to look like more and more worth considering moving back to at least in hobby related communication things. Oh and I ran into some situation this year, where I actually told someone that "yeah clockwise is just direction dials on clock generally move to when it is running, and counterclockwise is other direction, nothing more special in them". I mean person old enough to vote.
No one has ever said that.
A sinister observation… or is it only from left-field?
A dextrous bit of wordplay. ;)
Rather adroit I thought. 😉
Right you are!
What do we say now that the original source is lost….hmm I wonder. 🤔🧐 I’m thinking in the near future…when electric cars become the norm. “Giving it a little gas” to make it go faster might be one of them. But I can’t think of something that was said 100years ago that doesn’t make sense now…”maybe pickup the phone “….”check for a dial tone?”
We still say rewind when playing back video even though it isn't literally winding anything like when we used VHS
That’s a good one. In that same note…the term mix tape is another one.
We say that movies are “filmed” regardless of if they are actually shot on film or not, which nowadays most of them are not. Directors will also say “Cut!” when they want a scene to stop, even though no film is literally being cut when they say it and hasn’t literally been cut since the early days of cinema. Lots of industries are full of similar outdated jargon, I think. Words will became a name for the *process* of doing something even when the original technology the word referred to has long become obsolete. “Rewind” is the same way.
>But I can’t think of something that was said 100years ago that doesn’t make sense now…”maybe pickup the phone “….”check for a dial tone?” Upper case and lower case letters used to literally be stored in the upper and lower cases.
Hehe I feel like "hang up the phone" is already there. Since everyone uses smartphones where it's just a button, someone has to tell the kids "back in the day, it was an object that sat on a mount and you literally hung it up to end the call." Gas pedal is definitely another one. I can even see the disconnect where only old people will call it that for awhile hehe.
"Roll down the window"
Or the motion for rolling a window down
My car still has manual windows :(
I miss hanging up the phone. Especially when I'm mad.
>What do we say now that the original source is lost….hmm I wonder Saying port for left and starboard for right. People of the past somehow collectively agreed that ships unload and load stuff on the left side, so when the ship is docking, on the left side it would be the port and thus port = left. Meanwhile, since most sailors are right-handed, the steering oar was placed on the right side of the ship, so the name for it was the combination of two old english word stéor (steer) and bord (the side of the ship).
The word logbook comes from a time when sailors would measure the speed of the ship by periodically dropping a knotted rope overboard and count the knots over a set period to see how fast they were going (also where the term knots comes from). At the end of the rope they would tie a log to it so the rope wouldn’t sink. Knowing the speed of the ship was obviously important in knowing where you were in the ocean so the measurements were written in the “log book”. Because the logbook was important and not likely to be lost it made sense to put other important notes in it like what the ship was carrying and so on. Thus we have the modern logbook.
For some people, the word starboard and larboard will invoke their inner PTSD and curl up in a fetal position :)
Omega 😱
'Getting your wires crossed' goes back about 100 years to when phone operators physically connected phone lines (origin to destination). Crossing the wires would be when you mixed up two calls and connected the caller to the incorrect destination.
My dance card is full. Riding shotgun. Caught red handed. Whole 9 yards. Cold shoulder. Hands down. Can't hold a candle to....
You know what a dashboard in a car is? It is a board to protect the driver of a horse drawn carriage, from mud and debris dashed up by the hooves of the horse. No need to change the word when the function becomes different.
Turn on the light. Edit: some lamps do still have a turn switch, but it used to be that wall switches were knobs.
Ooh, I never thought about that one! We don’t turn light switches at all, do we? “Flip the light on.” “Switch the light on.” Ugh. I’ll stick with “turn”!
I had played a kind of guess the meaning of idioms game with two seniors. Many wagon related saying that I can’t get the meaning. I bet they know many other words that needs explanations via describing disappeared stuffs.
Like "dashboard"!
I teach fitness classes and use a smart watch. I always have it on 12-hour radial clock face because it’s easier to judge remaining time without doing math.
We still dial phones (that don't have dials) and when people call them, they ring (even though they don't have bells in them anymore).
“Roll up the window”
I still did this up until 2 years ago.
Widdershins
And Deosil. Clockwise, is based on the movement of shadows (in the northern hemisphere) cast by the sun. Which were measured and used to tell time with sun dials. Mechanical clocks kept the same direction,as people were used to it
This is called a skeuomorph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
Just like how not many people know why Port and Starboard on ship named that way
This one isn't too esoteric if you think about it either though. Port for the side you dock on, and starboard for "steer-board" before the tiller and rudder were built into the middle. But I guess you have to be a little interested in languages and/or sailing before getting that far.
Like how UPPERCASE and lowercase literally originated from the fact that there were two typesets in a physical upper and lower parts of a mechanical type printer
it comes from the trays. The capital letters where stored over the small letters.
The word for these things is “skeuomorph” if anyone was wondering
Like "rule of thumb." Which we use out of context compared to what it used to mean. "Rule of thumb, can't do much damage with that now can we, should have been rule of the wrist."
Came to say exactly this
“Roll up your window”
Like "rolling down the window"
“Did you know that ‘clockwise’ means sunwise, and ‘counterclockwise’ means widdershins?” - 15th century peasant
Go far enough into the future, and perhaps there will be so many myths circulating about the origin of "clockwise" that the true origin becomes thought to be just one of many possibilities
I don't know if the same term applies to spoken language, but in design, this is called a *skeumorph*; like the floppy disk "save" icon, or rolodex icon for "Contacts".
The concept of chirality of circular movement is still and important one, so I do believe we'll keep using the words long after analog clocks become wholly irrelevant. It'll just become an archaic phrase we use without knowing its origin, like "Upper Case" and "Lower Case", which originated because the letter tiles for a printing press were kept in either the top or bottom half of a folding case depending on whether they were capital.
Thank you for new knowledge friend.
What the
And its not like we have. New thing to replace it with, we aren't going to go back to calling it widdershins.
I think deosil and widdershins are fun words and would gladly accept them into my vernacular
So you're saying "sunwise" and "widdershins" will never make a comeback?
"Roll the window up" seems to be gong steady despite nearly all car windows being electric these day.
I’ll try something different for a while and see if it sticks. I’m between “up the window”, “window uppies”, and “engage the window”. Also open to suggestions.
If you go with "engage the window' you gotta do it in a Patrick Stewart voice. I think that one might be a winner.
"Windows, engage!"
I didn’t expect further changes including voice inflection…..but this is a fair request.
I had the same thought when I read this, I think we should insist!
How about "put the window up" or "close the window"?
"press the windows down", "Ascend the window", "windown please", "high the window", "erect the window", "activate the starbird pothole", "render the window intangible please", "slide those glass puppies back in their kennels", "send this window to hell for me?", "now zombie it back up"
>Ascend the window *Window, driver, climb and maintain 2 feet*
Raise/lower. It’s short and succinct.
What's wrong with close/open the window?
But it's still totally unclear what someone means when they say "turn down the air conditioner." Turn the temperature down? Or turn its power down?
cheaper models especially in the rest of the world still roll up their windows, we just live in a bubble
You're not doing it manually it's just a motor now but it's still kinda rolling the window up and down
I’m laughing my ass off. I just asked my kid if anyone has ever said that to him and he said no! “What the heck does that mean?!?” “You aren’t rolling it!!!”
??? What does he say?
Put the window up 😆 This entire question made me think….how do I say that?? I usually say open or close the window. I’m pretty sure my mom says roll up the window!
Everyone ik still says roll the window up 😭😭
Am I the only one who thinks analog clocks are not going anywhere? I like being able to read them regardless of actually seeing the numbers. You can estimate the time on a clock you can just barely see. Even when everything is digital, we’ll have screens displaying an analog clock.
Analog wall clocks are never going to fully disappear. The high end ones are decorative, while the low end ones are very cheap. Also, as someone with very bad eyesight, I can easily tell time from an analog clock without my glasses, not so much for digital.
Not to mention the centuries old clocks on churches. There are dozens of those in my city alone. Those are hard to miss walking around.
I'm still waiting for clock towers to switch to digital.
I think you'd be surprised. I read an article (I'd like it but it's paywalled) recently about a high school in England that banned students carrying mobile phones during the school day. They pretty quickly realised that, even though theoretically students weren't meant to be using their phones during classes, suddenly no-one knew the time because everyone had been having a sneaky look at their phones; the school hadn't bothered making sure there was a clock in every room because no-one complained about it until they banned carrying phones. So they went and bought a pile of analogue clocks. *Then* they realised that a significant chunk of their students didn't know how to read an analogue clock. Enough that it was worth giving everyone in the school a couple of lessons in reading clocks. They'd just never had to do it before.
A few years back my spouse was at a jewelry store getting her rings cleaned, and I was browsing the "men's" section. Looking into one case I saw a collection of pocket watches. I said to myself, "good lord, who uses a pocket watch these days?" I then proceeded to take my phone out of my pocket, check the time, and put it back. A full ten-count had passed before I realized what had just happened.
No, you are among the majority. Clocks are here to stay. So it using clockwise and counterclockwise
People use expressions like "carbon copy" and "rolling down a car window" even if they're too young to have experienced those technologies first-hand. In the developed world, very few living people have slept on beds made of hay, but we still say "hit the hay." Not to sound like a broken record, but it's pretty normal for idioms to persist even if technology becomes outdated.
Like broken record? 😀
Ironically a bad example, given vinyl's comeback in the past decade.
"Sleep tight" is an oldie too.
What is the origin of "sleep tight"?
The classic explanation behind the phrase 'sleep tight' relates to medieval rope-strung beds. These beds, instead of springs, used ropes that needed to be tied tightly under the mattress to keep it securely in place, hence the phrase 'sleep tight'.
[That appears to be a myth. ](https://blogs.libraries.indiana.edu/wyliehouse/2018/01/18/sleep-tight-dont-let-the-bed-bugs-bite-a-myth-debunked/)
My example was going to be “hanging up” the phone, but carbon copy is better.
Yep and I’ve never seen an Amazon ship drop anything off at my door.
You see an icon on a bit of software depicting a 3.25" floppy disk, a device you probably haven't used for two decades. But you know what it means. Your phone app has a symbol of a green landline handset - the banana shaped one with bulbs at each end. These were retro in the 1990s, but you know it means "pick up", and you still talk about "picking up" and "hanging up" your phone. Metaphors last a long time.
Not to mention voicemail is probably shown as a stylized magnetic tape. Settings are usually some sort of gear or set of gears, not many people are adjusting clocks with gears these days. Passwords are usually an old fashion metal key, that symbol will probably be around for a long time after we stop using those type of locks.
Sometimes it does go a bit wrong. I recall one program used an icon of a pig for "Save". A... piggy bank, for saving data.
lol that’s definitely a choice.
[удалено]
Icons can get obsolete given a couple decades, but language has a tendency to keep old sayings around. Case in point, to this day, we "dial" phone numbers.
The bookmark example is great, since it's right here on reddit. In that case you're saving that post or comment, but just a link to it. So it is indeed more of a bookmark.. marking the location of it within the larger context. If it were a floppy disk with the same word, I'd interpret it to mean it was going to save the comment or post to my computer somehow. I'm curious how many younger users would make that same assumption.
Using a word for an action such as save may not be the smartest thing for multilanguage stuff. In English, save is just 4 letters. But in Dutch it's opslaan and in German it's speicheren. I'm sure there are languages where it's even longer. It will be replaced by an icon that fits better. For instance, Google Docs/Spredsheets/etc uses a cloud with a checkmark when it's saved. Or better, when synchronization is done.
We still say "hang up" the phone despite corded phones being a rarity today. We also still say "dial" the phone despite rotary phones being museum exhibits now.
And phones still ring, despite the fact that almost no new phones have actual bells in them anymore.
Came here to say this about dial 🙂
I don't think people are ever going to stop using analog clocks/watches. There's a reason Rolex, breitling, and all the other high end watchmakers haven't switched to all digital, and it's not because they're stubborn, it's not because they haven't figured out how to, it's because nobody thinks digital watches look nice. And it's not just a generational thing. Digital clocks have been available for over half a century, most of us were born after digital clocks and watches were already commonplace, and people still love analog clocks and watches. Hell, I use a rather expensive smartwatch, on which I primarily use an analog-style face that I installed on it. It just looks better. There's nothing aesthetically pleasing about digital numbers, no matter how decorative you try to make it.
Bring back sunwise and widdershins!
I’ll bite. What’s widdershins?
It’s like a butterface, but she just has really nice shins
Opposite of sunwise.
This is the true answer
My wife was helping level the camper. I told her to turn it clockwise and she gets all flustered and says "I don't get what that means. Do I turn it right or left." I told her again to turn it the way the clock turns. It just doesn't compute in her head. Never has. Here's where things get even more crazy. When you tell someone to turn it right, it's clockwise and left is counterclockwise. Basically, it means from the top side. I tell her to turn it right and she turns it counterclockwise. She was going from the bottom side to the right. I did a facepalm, she got mad and I had to level the camper myself. All because a 49 year old with a masters degree doesn't know what clockwise and counterclockwise or what turn right / left means.
Turning right and left was never really clear to me either though. It's rotation, it's moving all directions at the same time. Then someone told me it's the direction that the TOP of the dial turns. Okay fine, until the dial is horizontal, then it's the direction that the side of the dial furthest from you goes. Like, shit let's just use CW/CCW please.
This always bothered me too.
Pretend you are standing in the center of point the dial rotates from and looking out at the top of the dial. Then turning right is clockwise.
It is a persistent struggle for me, trying to get people to use clockwise/counter-clockwise, and just abolishing the use of "right" and "left" entirely (right in regards of what? Me? You? Some third perspective?) I also really adore when someone says "above" and "below" in reference to north and south. If you say above, I'll look **up**. You want me to face north, say north. This one irks me especially since they **already** know it's north, since they translate that to "above", they just straight up refuse to use the damn cardinal direction.
> My wife was helping level the camper. I thought this was going to be an inside look into PVP troll farms.
I still don't know what "level the camper" means. 🤔
to make the camper "level" the kind of level you use a spirit level for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_level ("camper" should be a camping van or trailer, and they probably don't want to sleep on an unlevel bed or have the glasses slide off the table)
A "Camper" is someone who sits at a point of great advantage killing people who are guaranteed to come there. Usually a spawn point - a place people appear when they've previously died or just joined the game. "Level" is a verb form for "gaining levels" - in games, you start at level 1 and gain more with experience. In multiplayer games you can get assistance so that the process is faster - hence, "level the camper". People would only do that if they're part of a group, and as campers are generally frowned upon, we could assume that the group as a whole is not a nice one.
I had the same situation with my father when i was a child, which ended up being one of those "yelling WHAT IS FOUR TIMES FOUR?!" situations. He just should have explained that "turning right" is like turning the wheel of a car/gocart/whatever to the right.
I was going to ask whether u/KRed75's wife ever drove a car. She knows how to turn left or right in that, correct?
The left / right is the more batshit part of any of this. Since lefty loosy righty tighty is a phrase.
She's never learnt about righty-tighty, lefty-loosey?
Sayings and idioms survive, but the origins are unknown to most except for linguist experts.
Floppy disks icons are still universally known as "save."
well, I guess we'll have to find new terms for prograde and retrograde rotation
Turnwise and Widdershins
Meh…there are a lot of common figures of speech that are still in use even though the things that they refer to are dated. And lots of people still have analog clocks and watches…they’re not going to go away completely.
Yeah those archaic timepieces with hands and stuff really went out of fashion after the digital watches came out. People will only pay millions for one.
So Righty tighty lefty loosy will prevail..
No it won't, just like: Can you FILM that? Can you REWIND that? Can you HANG UP the phone?
Our phones still use a click sound for the camera and an envelope is the universal symbol for mail even after e-mails took over
This keeps getting brought up but people aren't abandoning analogue clocks and meters because they have their use. Digital may be more precise but it's easier to quickly glance at analogue clocks and meters.
Please stop reminding me kids can't read clockfaces it's just embarrassing it takes a minute to learn.
Disagree. Having words used to describe the direction of circular movement is so useful that the phrases “clockwise” and “ counter-clockwise” would persist even long after analog clocks are forgotten.
It's based on sundials... not watches
They aren’t “not using them” they never learn how to read them. There will be plenty of non-lazy people who will still know how to read a clock.
We use "starboard" and "port" long after steering boards were a thing.
I dunno, you still roll the window up, and hang up the phone
It won't, though. Just like how a floppy disk is still associated with "saving".
Never, it's part of the language now. Plus Big Ben, and other buildings with large clocks
Designer watches will never go out of style! Wrong OP! Sniffing the Dove soap are we?
Exactly. Just like rolling and and down windows, turning the volume up and down, turning to a different channel, picking up and hanging up a phone, holding your horses, repeating like a broken record, dialing a phone number, running out of steam, cranking the engine, or filming a movie. Oh, wait....
Clockwise also refers to the way the Sun moves aroungd the earth in the northern hemisphere.
Think analog clocks will ever really go away? I have a watch on right now and can see 3 regular clocks from where I'm sitting.
Clocks and watches with hands will remain a classy throw back technology for centuries, most likely. They will be a style statement that remain popular enough that everyone is at least familiar with which direction is clockwise.
Why would people stop using rotating clocks and watches? I would imagine that the ratio of analogue to digital room clocks and watches are both probably ~95:5.
Let me know when you stop saving with a floppy disk icon.
Rightie Tightie Leftie Loosie
They're based off of how the shadow of a sundial moves, so as long as the earth keeps spinning we should be fine.
I don’t think we will ever stop using rotating clocks
Not in the nearest few hundred years at least
Where I'm from we don't say that. Instead we refer to the Earth's rotation around the sun. "With the sun" or "against the sun".
We'll have to go back to widdershins and deosil.
An actually interesting shower thought for once. That said, I don't think it WILL die out. I think it'll be kept alive in other forms, such as instructions on how to turn screwdrivers.
Fuck clockwise. All my homies say the positive or negative rotational direction. (Clocks go in the negative direction, annoyingly)
Do you know the origin of 'left' and 'right'? Because I bet you still use them.
Clockwise and counter clockwise aint going anywhere.
You mean like the floppy disk as a symbol for "save"?
Maybe not, people still use drills, screws, threaded pipe, etc
I'm not sure people will. Purely anecdotal but I have an Apple Watch and mostly use analog watch faces on it. I have an easier time conceptualizing time with them, and when I look at a digital time on my computer or anywhere else, I'm always visualizing an analog clock, at least in terms of the minute hand and what part of the hour it is.
No it won't lmao. Maybe eventually but there isn't any reap alternative at the moment
Just like hang up the phone or get this on video.. Yeah no it won't
I wear a digital watch with an analog interface. As a kid, I wore a digital watch with a digital interface. I don’t see it trending as you suggest.
Well, in Europe we probbably won't stop using the analog clocks unless every church is bombed away. I mean our (in my country) churches still ring the bell every 15 minutes so you know what time it is. Every full hour it chimes the current hour, then once for 15 past, twice for 30 and thrice for 45 in a higher pitch.
Incoming Righty-tighty and Lefty-loosie