Pre-Archaic Industrial Jargon

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 3:20 AM, Larry Sheldon wrote:
>
> On 3/10/2012 2:07 AM, W Brewer wrote:
>
> > Anachronyms.  My favorites are telephone expressions. Hang up your
> > phone, it is off the hook. Phone is ringing.  I dialed the wrong number.
> > Address book. Yellow pages.
>
> Add "busy signal", "dial tone" "on the line", "I'll ring your party".

Computational linguist Bill McNeill recently blogged about another
kind of anachronym -- "sex tape":

http://cornercases.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/kim-kardashians-sex-tape/

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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