The Archeology of Words

 Annamaria on Monday

I am posting something new this week and saving my Bouchercon hiatus for next Monday, when I will really need it.  I will be starting that Sunday, the day I would ordinarily be writing a blog, by appearing on a panel first thing in the AM, then the book signing and the sad good-byes.  By mid-afternoon I will be on the train from San Diego to Los Angels, where I will spend the ensuing week visiting friends and having one of the more consequential meetings of my life.

But today, I want to talk about words.

Words, we know, change their meaning over time.  Sometimes fundamentally. If you read Jane Austen, for instance, you probably have noticed that when she uses the word "stupid," she is describing a person who cannot think of what to say or cannot reveal how she feels. We, in the 20th Century, on the other hand, use "stupid" to describe a person sorely lacking in mental acuity.

These days also require us to learn new words, invented to name functions of ever more complex technological advancements.  Hashtags.  Streaming. Podcasts, words that did not exist a decade or so ago, that are everyday words to us now.  Or brand names that have become ordinary words like "to google" or "zoom meeting." 

What fascinates me as a historical novelist are the words that do not change, even though the technology has made their original meaning completely obsolete. 

Here are some vestiges of the past in words and phrases still in everyday use:

Type

The word started out as a noun meaning a place of letters sequenced in a block that was used to print words on paper.  This word started with Gutenberg!  Now it is a verb "typing" for what I am doing to make these words on a screen, so you can read them tomorrow.  MOST likely they will never be printed on paper. 

DIAL

It started out as a noun meaning a flat round object that provided some information--like a sundial or the the face of a clock.  With the invention of the rotary phone it became of verb....

A verb we still use, even though we are no loner placing calls on something that looks like this--

And speaking of telephones, why do we still say...

Hang up

Tape

As a noun it still means something long and flat, but as verb, it came to mean recording sounds (and eventually sounds and pictures) on something that looks like tape.  We still say tape when there is no such things involved.

Film

We still call them films when there is no such process involved in making them.

Turn up, turn down

We say these words when talking about lights and sound, as if their the intensity or the loudness were still controlled by knobs.

Roll up or roll down

Is that what you do with the car window?  Sure we say it that way.  But...

DJ

The music the DJ (Disc Jockey) chooses no longer comes on discs, but we still call the ones who put together the playlist DJs.

I am sure I have missed number of such atavistic words.  Tell me what I have missed.