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Readers: Happy New Year!
Do you still dial the phone in your wet bathing suit? Get out of the house! You're ruining the carpet.
Every day, people use anachronisms -- words and phrases that once made sense but don't anymore. We've dealt with some of these in previous segments.
Sometimes, the usage technically isn't wrong. But the Horribly Wrong team believes you'd benefit by weaning yourself off all of them. We acknowledge that, in most cases, we've lost the battle.
Florida Archives
Bathing Suit:
Remarkably, it was the beginning of the 19th century before ocean swimming became popular in the United States. Naturally, people couldn't do it in street clothes. But rules of modesty were in vogue at the time. Women originally wore a full sleeved dress and leggings, which tended to defeat the goal of cooling off. This contraption was called a "bathing suit."
Nowadays, no one at the beach or the pool is bathing. That term once described any time in the water, but now has come to mean only immersion for purposes of soaping up.
Women now wear one- or two-piece outfits, often barely legal, but for lack of a better term, "swimsuit" still would be acceptable. Men's garb properly should be called "swim shorts” or “trunks.” Unless they're wearing what amounts to nylon panties. That’s not a suit.
axleaddict.com
Glove compartment/Roll down your window
Early cars were open to the elements. A ride in the country on a brisk winter's day could range from uncomfortable to injurious. Drivers traditionally kept gloves in their cars to help them manage a frigid steering wheel. Few people still store gloves in their glove compartment. But, unlike some of our other examples, we suspect some, especially in northern climes, still do.
And for decades, windows were raised and lowered by circular cranks. They’re electronic now, but the nomenclature stuck.
www.leoisaac.com
Reviewing the company books/cooking the books:
A few of our loyal readers suggest some small businesses still do their accounting by hand in big ledgers. We suspect most use a computer.
Library of Congress
Filming:
We visited this in a previous segment. "Filming” refers to recording something on actual film. But while "dialing" or "tuning" refer to practices no longer used and thus are understood to be colloquial terms, some people still use film, so you really shouldn't use it unless someone really is using film. Webster’s has ruled it acceptable, but the “Horribly Wrong” team is about clarity! “Taped,” as a colloquial really no longer works either, since virtually nothing is recorded on magnetic tape, but, rather, on memory cards. Say, “recorded” or “shot.” You certainly don’t film something live. You broadcast or stream it live.
This anachronism is behind another one. You’ve heard sportscasters refer to “the highlight reel.” Before video, team staffers and news crews shot on film, which of course was run through projectors on a reel. When they wanted to splice together a collection of the best plays, that's what they called it.
Carbon copy:
Remember the scene in the movie Office Space in which the guys smashed a printer? The precursor to printers was photocopiers, which have been around only in the lifetime of the "Horribly Wrong" team. Current ones uses standard paper, but early ones were clunky and copied onto thermal paper, a thin paper on a roll that was coated in some kind of chemical which ruined your day if you rubbed a page and then accidentally touched your tongue. Before that? Way back in Charles Dickens' era, firms employed "scriveners" to laboriously rewrite documents. Typewriters were a game changer, but you still had to retype copies.
In the early 20th century came "carbon paper." It was a sheet coated in pigment and oil that was placed between two regular sheets of paper and the triad was rolled into the typewriter. A keystroke banged through the first sheet and into the "carbon paper" which marked the same character on the second sheet. Voila! Of course, you ended your day with black smudges all over your hand, face, and white dress shirt.
Documents often had a note at the bottom saying something such as: "CC: Personnel." That meant that a carbon copy went to the personnel office. That's what it was called before pinheads invented the term "human resources." Wouldn't a toenail be a “human resource”? When photocopiers made carbon paper obsolete, the phrase "carbon copy" stuck. So did “CC.” Check your email.
Ice box advertisement, Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalog, Spring 1920
Icebox:
Before electric refrigerators, food was kept cold in something that looked like a refrigerator does now but didn't plug in. Instead, a big block of ice was placed inside. An "ice man" delivered it. You could argue that the cooler you use for your tailgate or the beach is an "icebox," although it likely uses cubes instead of a big block.
Record album:
The first records were low-quality discs that had to be played at a high speed to get good sound. At first, it was a swift 78 revolutions per minute (RPM). The singles that teens bought in the 1950s turned at 45 RPM. Technology later allowed for large "long playing" (LP) records that could play at just 33 RPM and hold several songs per side while still being highly faithful ("high fidelity.") to the quality of the original The phrase later was shortened to "Hi-Fi," which later inspired “Wi-Fi.” The early 78 RPM technology required people to buy a set of dozens of discs to enjoy even an hourlong performance. They came in large books whose pages had "pockets" into which the discs were stored for convenience and protection, The books resembled portrait albums. These days, it's not even a physical anything. But a collection of songs still is called an "album."
Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/OZHusBtDpA4
Next time: More anachronisms.
Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
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NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!