Glossary of obsolete terms

It occurred to me recently that there are words we use on a daily basis that, because of technology, have become obsolete terms.  We continue to use these terms and phrases even though many of us have no idea where they originated.  This is particularly true of younger folks who grew up in a much more technologically advanced era.

Broken record: I know we’ve heard people who repeat things over and over.  I’ve had to repeat myself a number of times when people don’t listen.  When that happens, I do feel like a broken record.  Back in the day when music was played on long playing (LP) records, these pieces of vinyl had a tendency to crack and break.  The needle on the record player would bounce back and cause one full rotation to repeat over and over until someone went over and pushed the needle forward to skip over the break in the record.

Dial that number: How often have you asked someone for the dial-in number for a conference call?  There are usually only buttons. No dial is involved.  Back in the old days, telephones didn’t have buttons for numbers.  There was a round dial attached to the front that had a hole for each number.  The user would have to put their finger in the hole and turn the dial clockwise until the dial stopped.  The dial would spring back to its original position.  This was done for each digit of the phone number.

Hang up the phone: Closely related to dialing the phone, the hand set had a wire that attached to the actual base phone. The phone base was designed to allow the handset to “hang” on it when not in use.  When you were done talking to the other party (whether they were done or not) you would “hang up the phone”.

By the book: We’ve heard of people who do things “by the book”.  In days past, all the rules for an organization were published in a rule book (a book is like a very, very long tweet). Someone who followed all of the rules was known to do things by the book.

Taping a movie: In the beginning of home recording, there was the VCR.  This stood for video cassette recorder.  These little black cassette boxes contained rolled up tape on which movies and TV shows were recorded.  This advanced technology guaranteed that we would never miss an episode of The Love Boat.  We eventually went to disks such as DVD and now to DVR, on which we record digitally on some form of internal disk.  No tape is used, but we don’t disk it.  We tape it…to disk.

See my related post: Performance Evaluations – Carrot or Stick?

I didn’t get that memo: Before computers and before they were connected on something called a network, business was done largely on paper.  If someone wanted to send out a communication to a larger group of people in the office, they would type up a memo.  This was semi-formal note, typed on paper, with paper copies distributed to all recipients. Today when someone is informed of a rule they aren’t aware of, they simply argue that they didn’t get that memo.  We can track electronically whether you got an email.

This is on my dime: Long before cell phones, when people needed to call home, they would find a nearby phone booth (an actual small closet that contained a pay phone and was suitable for changing into super-hero clothing).  A three-minute phone call cost ten cents.  So if you called someone and they did all the talking, rules of etiquette of the day allowed you to call them out for “talking on your dime”.  Evidently, if you paid the ten cents, you were entitled to dominate the conversation.

CC on email: The aforementioned memo might be directed to one individual.  But it was common to provide a copy to, say, the boss.  When the memo was typed, the “secretary” would put another sheet of paper in the typewriter sandwiching a piece of carbon paper.  This would create a second copy.  The memo recipient would then see that the boss was copied when they saw “cc: The Boss”. In today’s email world, the term has evolved to mean complimentary copy, but it evolved from the carbon days.

Run through the wringer: We’ve all had that tough meeting where we were interrogated by the boss with a myriad of questions about why the project was late. When you walked out, you may have felt like you had been run through the ringer. This is a laundry term. In the days long before me, automatic washers and dryers had not been invented. Laundry was washed in a large washtub.  To dry the clothes, they were hung up on a clothes line.  But not before they were wrung out by rolling each item between two long rollers to get the excess water out. (Related term: Tit caught in the wringer – this is apparently a much tougher meeting).

The return key: On electric typewriters, the return key would actually return the carriage back to the right, allowing the typist to begin typing again at the left side of the page. You had to do this at the end of every line, not just when you reached the end of a paragraph.  There was a handy little bell that warned you that you needed to do a carriage return soon.  I’m sure that made for a pleasant day in a room of twenty typists.

And finally, not an obsolete term, but an obsolete icon: The icon used in office to save a document is a small picture of a floppy disk.  I’d be surprised if anybody saves their documents to a floppy disk.  Some people may use a jump drive for external storage, but the floppy disk has gone the way of the laundry wringer.

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As always, I welcome your comments and criticisms.