Language can help preserve a certain time period long after the rest of the world has moved on. Slang, idioms, and metaphors provide insight into a culture’s activities, and as technology evolves and old practices fade away, the words and phrases they inspired often remain frozen in time. From ancient oil lamps to rotary phones, many outdated technologies and customs have left their mark on how we communicate today. While younger generations might never experience the physical act of “rolling up” a car window or “dialing” a phone, these phrases persist in our vocabulary as linguistic fossils of the past. Here’s a look at seven common expressions whose origins might stump younger generations.
In the 18th century, people belonged to social clubs for gaming, dining, making connections, and of course, gossiping. In many clubs, members were admitted through anonymous voting with different colored balls. A red ball was a positive answer, while a black ball was negative. To be blackballed meant you were found wanting, cast out, and denied membership. The colored balls may not be in use anymore, but “blackballed” still means “excluded from an organization or a group.”
This acronym stands for “carbon copy,” which is how people used to copy handwritten messages. A sheet of carbon paper would be layered between sheets of blank paper and the pressure from writing on the top sheet would transfer a copy from the carbon to the bottom sheet. Today, we use photocopiers, but the idea of making copies still lingers in email terminology. The “CC” line adds email addresses to receive copies of the email, and saying “CC me” is a request to receive a copy.
During the 18th century, business owners would keep track of debts, interests, and loans on tally sticks with notches carved on the wood. When someone arrived to pay off a debt right before the next notch was carved, they had arrived “in the nick of time.”
Even the most bare bones of new cars manufactured today have power windows, but only 20 or so years ago, it was common to use a hand crank to lower and raise car windows. The phrase “roll up the window” is a holdover from this era, even though the task is virtually obsolete.
Long before cellphones and even before push-button landline phones, people used rotary phones. With these telephones, a user would spin a dial to enter each number. (It was tedious, but still more efficient than using an operator to route all telephone calls, as in the early days of the telephone.) The concept of “dialing a number” has stuck with us in the present day, even though most of us just hit a single “call” button in our contact list.
Before homes were wired for electricity, people lit their rooms with candles and oil lamps. This phrase hearkens back to those days and refers to someone staying up late and using an oil lamp, perhaps to read or write.
This term is more modern than the others, but it’s a reminder that language evolves rapidly. When the internet was still in its infancy, users had to type “www.” (which stands for “World Wide Web”) at the beginning of a website address to navigate to the right page. Now this part of a website address is automatically populated into the browser bar, and the phrase “World Wide Web” feels antiquated.
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