Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler for December 30, 2015

For the same reason some people say “close the light.”

Wow… it took a few moments to me too to realize why we say that.

Why do we “dial” a number on a phone with buttons?

I’ve been saying for the past couple of years that it won’t take long until people under 25 years old won’t know why we say, “hang up the phone”.

The other day my nephew asked me why I say “roll up the car window”.

I have an older one for you. Crank up the car.

I have heard “close the light” used by two elderly speakers of a rural mountain dialect. I suspect the term goes back to an era before electric lights were common.- the idiom being passed along through family use. It probably refers to opening or closing a valve on a gas light. .It is also possible “close the light” is an incorrect literal translation of an idiom..The Wikipedia entries on Canadian English and Quebec English say the phrase is a Quebecois regionalism, which uses translated French words such as, according to another forum, ouvre la lumiere—literally, “open the light” or fermer les lumieres for “close the lights.”

Another colloquial term I haven’t quite figured out is “to carry” referring to driving someone someplace as in -“I carried her over to Aunt Lucy’s”(as spoken in Mid-Atlantic Tidewater and coastal Southern dialects.)

Cool Granny says: “Don’t judge an iphone by its candy shell !”

All these comments sound like a broken record. Let’s rewind the tape.

On a related note. where does Superman change clothes nowadays?

There should be a term for technical jargon that far outlasts the technology.

(i wonder what kids think a ‘party line’ is?)

Don’t people still say they’re “taping” the video?