You think motorcycles are a thing of the past?
Ones with kick starters are.
perhaps ādiverge from their originā ?
cf ādialing a numberā and ācalling a friendā
Or, I suppose the word-object could have been unlinked from its parent, or had the origin-pointer dereferenced. That could be problematic. Letās just hope our language is not null-terminated, eitherā¦
I wonder if my 7 year old will think Motley Crue is singing about fundraising.
Probably more like wondering why those ugly women with the bad haircuts are jumping all around the stage like that.
iād be surprised if your kid knows (or cares) who motley crĆ¼e even is!
This was literally the first time Iāve ever heard anyone associated with that band (other than Odean, of course).
I think it is great when words āloseā their origins. It liberates them from the incidental details of the original usage.
But I may also be the only person who thinks we should have kept the floppy disk as the āsaveā symbol until nobody remembers what those things were and it is perceived as fully abstract.
OK sorry, can anyone explain? What word? What origin?
Hi @gilgongo, if a topic appears empty or confusing - thereās probably a video you canāt see on the BBS. Just follow the (really small) link provided to the original Boing Boing entry to see the vid. Here the link says:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://boingboing.net/2014/09/18/watching-words-lose-their-orig.html
That should help.
They do if you are parenting right.
(I kid, I kid. Not a big hair band fan. KMFDM, howeverā¦)
I canāt watch the video now, but I do have a few pet words whose alterations have bothered me. For one, decimation is only 10% of something destroyed/killed. But now it means something much worse.
And of course the word āregulationā in the 2nd Amendment has the old use meaning something in proper working order, well drilled, has their shit together - not something that is controlled by a bunch of laws.
You, sir, have forgotten how to RAWWWWWWWWWWWWWK.
Donāt follow motorcross much do you?
Hereās one thatās become fully abstract.
Thanks Catgrin, it does feel like I canāt see something. The link you quote just takes me back to the entry. Oh well, none the wiser. See ya.
The main entry is where you should be going.
The vid is Motley Crue singing āKickstart my Heartā. You might be missing the one-line joke āI wonder if my 7 year old will think Motley Crue is singing about fundraising.ā under it. This happens sometimes when vids are part of a post.
Weāll figure it out. It is certainly something weāve noted. Its extra weird when the post is meant for the discussion.
I guess the author assumes we all know the titles of Motley Crue songs. The author assumes wrongly.
Iād be surprised if many people who werenāt already familiar with the song would even realize he was using the word ākickstartā in that video, itās pretty hard to make out with that slurred nasal style he has and ākickstartā is an unusual enough expression that itās not the first thing that comes to mind when you hear some ambiguous wordsā¦I thought it was ācanāt stop my heartā until I googled some lyrics.
[quote=ācatgrin, post:10, topic:41380, full:trueā]This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://boingboing.net/2014/09/18/watching-words-lose-their-orig.html
That should help.
[/quote]If he canāt see it on the BBS, he also probably canāt see it on the normal page (due to adblockers/noscipt/etc.). Instead of just pointing him back to another blank page, you could have just told him that āItās a video of a song called āKickstart My Heartāā ā¦ shorter, more informative, and no link-clicking required.
