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Terms Which Have Disappeared
- Thread starter KILO NOVEMBER
- Start date
skydog757
A-List Customer
- Messages
- 465
- Location
- Thumb Area, Michigan
Now you're cookin' with gas!
KILO NOVEMBER
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,025
- Location
- Hurricane Coast Florida
When I was in high school (late 1960's to early 1970's), students pursued educational "tracks". For those of us headed to college, it was the academic track, for others it was a vocational track. The most common one for girls involved secretarial skills. "shorthand" was one of the courses. If I recall correctly, this was spread over two years; Shorthand I and Shorthand II. I imagine that shorthand has disappeared, or nearly so, as a job skill.
LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,057
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- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Shorthand's still useful for reporters, or at least I found it to be so when I was one. Still got my books, too!
KILO NOVEMBER
One Too Many
- Messages
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- Hurricane Coast Florida
Pitman or Gregg?
LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,057
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- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Gregg. Edition of 1916.
KILO NOVEMBER
One Too Many
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- 1,025
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- Hurricane Coast Florida
OK, how about these now-obsolete gadgets which were everywhere as recently as the 1970's?
1) Slide rule, and the ne plus ultra for nerddom, a leather belt scabbard for same (Before anyone gets offended, I'm looking at my own on, in the original box, on top of a nearby bookcase.)
2) Adding machine, the kind with a column of digits for each decimal place and a crank on the right side for "input"
I don't imagine that any mathletes or accountants under 40 have ever handled these in anger.
Oh, wait! I'll bet that Lizzie has both and uses them weekly, if not daily.
j)
1) Slide rule, and the ne plus ultra for nerddom, a leather belt scabbard for same (Before anyone gets offended, I'm looking at my own on, in the original box, on top of a nearby bookcase.)
2) Adding machine, the kind with a column of digits for each decimal place and a crank on the right side for "input"
I don't imagine that any mathletes or accountants under 40 have ever handled these in anger.
Oh, wait! I'll bet that Lizzie has both and uses them weekly, if not daily.
j)
LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,057
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I do use an adding machine -- a Burroughs Portable that's been in the family for about seventy years -- but I was never any good at slide rule. My class was the last year it was taught, and I could do simple addition and multiplication on it, but that's as far as I ever got.
Bruce Wayne
My Mail is Forwarded Here
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- 3,394
CaramelSmoothie
Practically Family
- Messages
- 892
- Location
- With my Hats
I happened to catch a movie a few days ago called "The Little Giant" with Edward G. Robinson. I was shocked to hear one of the characters say, "This is a nice crib", when referring to a home. And all this time I thought that originated in the 80s/90s among the hip hop crowd. Same as the term "gat" for guns.
LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,057
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
"This gat had gittens!"
-- Thug upon discovering a large pistol in a drawer full of smaller guns, "Home Sweet Homicide" (1946)
-- Thug upon discovering a large pistol in a drawer full of smaller guns, "Home Sweet Homicide" (1946)
KILO NOVEMBER
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,025
- Location
- Hurricane Coast Florida
"The Gatling gun was designed by the American inventor Dr. Richard J. Gatling in 1861 and patented on November 4, 1862." -- WikiPedia
How long after it's introduction do you suppose it took troops under fire to shorten the reference to "gat"?
- Messages
- 11,912
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- Southern California
Along these lines, I read something a year or two ago that stated the main reason NASA has no plans to return to the moon is because the latest generation of engineers have looked at the blueprints and specifications for the Lunar Modules built in the late 60s and early 70s and can't figure out how they worked. :eusa_doh: I have no idea whether or not it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out it was.
tealseal
A-List Customer
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- 380
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- Tucson, AZ
My goodness. What a thread! It does make me wonder, though....
I use the word "swell" to describe something brilliant or awesome that someone has done; when I run too many appliances from the same circuit and the power goes, I go check the "fuse box"; I tell people to "drop me a line" (even though that often results in a text); I've used "broken record" (although, for a more modern twist, my dad occasionally used "skipped disc", which I also sometimes use); I call my Dyson a "Hoover"; I call a compilation of songs by a recording artist an "album" (even if, as often now, these things are rarely actually albums); I've often told people that I will "eat my best hat" if I'm to be proven incorrect about something; I use "full stop" to emphasize a point; I "roll down" windows; I use "dressed to the nines" or "dressed in their Sunday best" as appropriate to describe the attire of a person/group of people.
Many of the other "dying" phrases or words I've read on this thread I've heard during my life and/or still use in mine, and that was before I got into hats, and, subsequently, the Golden Era.
I'm 27. Either I'm not the "young people" y'all are talking about (not flattering), we're not as screwed as we really think regarding these golden words and phrases disappearing into an oblivion of 140 characters, or I got lucky with my upbringing and love of the English language and it's many colloquialisms. I thank the OP for starting this, as I never knew that some of the things I say on a daily basis are considered to be anachronisms.
Best,
-TS
I use the word "swell" to describe something brilliant or awesome that someone has done; when I run too many appliances from the same circuit and the power goes, I go check the "fuse box"; I tell people to "drop me a line" (even though that often results in a text); I've used "broken record" (although, for a more modern twist, my dad occasionally used "skipped disc", which I also sometimes use); I call my Dyson a "Hoover"; I call a compilation of songs by a recording artist an "album" (even if, as often now, these things are rarely actually albums); I've often told people that I will "eat my best hat" if I'm to be proven incorrect about something; I use "full stop" to emphasize a point; I "roll down" windows; I use "dressed to the nines" or "dressed in their Sunday best" as appropriate to describe the attire of a person/group of people.
Many of the other "dying" phrases or words I've read on this thread I've heard during my life and/or still use in mine, and that was before I got into hats, and, subsequently, the Golden Era.
I'm 27. Either I'm not the "young people" y'all are talking about (not flattering), we're not as screwed as we really think regarding these golden words and phrases disappearing into an oblivion of 140 characters, or I got lucky with my upbringing and love of the English language and it's many colloquialisms. I thank the OP for starting this, as I never knew that some of the things I say on a daily basis are considered to be anachronisms.
Best,
-TS
KILO NOVEMBER
One Too Many
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- 1,025
- Location
- Hurricane Coast Florida
I thank the OP for starting this, as I never knew that some of the things I say on a daily basis are considered to be anachronisms.
As the "OP", I am grateful for your appreciation. This thread went in directions I hadn't anticipated,
but that's the nature of social activities.
My notion on starting it was to draw attention not so much to words or phrases which have come and gone
(and continue to do so on ever-shorter cycles given the speed at which contemporary communications
technology affords the spread of language and other cultural inventions), but to note the disappearance
of machines and categories of businesses within living memory.
Here are a few more business-related terms which have disappeared because the things they represent
have been made obsolete:
typing pool
Dictaphone
wire (as in "Send me a kiss by wire, Honey my heart's on fire!" or "HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL WIRE PALADIN SAN FRANCISCO")
I imagine that some of our UK posters will chime in that on that side of the Atlantic, the English-speaking world uses the term "hoover" as synonymous with "vacuum cleaner", just as the brand name "kleenex" is used for any brand of facial tissue.
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Stanley Doble
Call Me a Cab
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- Cobourg
A few years ago when some private individuals started talking about building their own space ships, some NASA engineers warned them that there was no practical way to shield humans from the radiation in outer space, which we are normally protected from by the atmosphere.
They said they would need lead shielding 4 feet thick. The new guys asked them what they used on the Moon missions and they replied they didn't know, they threw away all the data and tapes years ago.
You've got to be kidding me. We saved every episode of Gilligan's Island but NASA never bothered saving the tapes of the moon missions?
- Messages
- 11,912
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It can be a little shocking to find out how ill-prepared NASA was in the early days when it came to recording their own history, whether due to poor planning or simply because technologies we take for granted today didn't exist then. For example, they didn't have a way to record the footage of Neil Armstrong's "small step" onto the surface of the moon from the live feed, so they had to point a camera at one of the television monitors in Mission Control. :twitch:
Prestone, for all antifreeze, Reynolds Wrap for aluminum foil, Cessna for all light airplanes, Lear jet for business jets, although I think I hear Gulfstream a little more often these days, probably because of so many Rap stars!
HudsonHawk
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,381
Did you read that on The Onion? Engineers today are just as smart, if not smarter, as those in the 60's and 70's. Just because engineers today use an electronic calculator that gives them a more precise figure rather than a manual one that gets them "in the ballpark" doesn't mean they don't understand mathematical relationships. We don't return to the moon because it costs a fortune and serves no purpose.
