An actual writing thread... Dated metaphores and similes.

[big_cane_sugar]

when does a metaphor or simile become too dated to use

Never. Hardly any of our readers have plowed a field or spun a thread or rubbed sticks together to start a fire or pounded hot iron into a useful shape or broken a horse or felt our sails catch the wind and so on, but I advocate using all kinds of things like this.

We all know that once upon a time life felt real.

 

[TheLobster]

One I heard recently was “a few sandwiches short of a picnic,” and I think it’s wonderful.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

"Hang up", to end a phone call.
"Dial" a phone number.

Presumably apocryphal and a visual metaphor but: the young people who see a floppy disk and say, "Cool, somebody 3D printed the Save icon."

 

[Belegon]

“I feel thin, sort of stretched; like too much butter scraped over too little bread.”

(I hope I don’t have to cite where this is from).

No, but to quote Willy Wonka...

"Stop. Reverse that."

 

[Belegon]

I do! I liked Ally McBeal quite a lot, actually.

Is she still with Harrison Ford???

 

[MrPixel]

Is she still with Harrison Ford???

Yes.

 

[StillStunned]

For a time, when a rugby scrum was set, the ref would call out the steps: "Crouch, touch, pause, engage!" It didn't take long for me and my filthy-minded friends to figure out that this also worked for sex.

Sadly, World Rugby decided to change the calls. "Crouch, bind, set!" doesn't sound sexy at all.

 

[BeechLeaf]

You don't find tying your partner up then dumping them in a big tub of jelly sexy at all?

 

[JTass]

A while back, I was out with a group of friends and jokingly referred to "rescuing the fair maiden from durance vile." They all looked at me like I had two heads and insisted that I made it up.

 

[SkyBubble]

I think he meant the grey static color of a channel that wasn't broadcasting. I was really into William Gibson and cyberpunk for a while, and what I heard from other cyberpunk authors who lived in the US when TV was getting popular was that TV channels used to just ... stop broadcasting. And you'd just see static.

That's where the term "test pattern" comes from.

 

[SkyBubble]

I wrote somewhere not long ago about using dated idiom. The two female protagonists in Love is Enough are ghosts of prostitutes who died in 1927. Their dialog was peppered with idiom from the 1920's, which I researched pretty extensively.

That's the bee's knees!

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I wrote somewhere not long ago about using dated idiom. The two female protagonists in Love is Enough are ghosts of prostitutes who died in 1927. Their dialog was peppered with idiom from the 1920's, which I researched pretty extensively.

What I found was that a lot of the dated idiom was very familiar to me. It carried into the 1930's when my parents picked it up, and they passed it down to me. It started me wondering if the language I commonly use was hard for younger people to understand.

I've avoided some idiom since then,. Some is ancient and ingrained in the language. I don't worry too much about those. Other examples are relatively recent but not current. Those are the ones I try to avoid.

We need more stories here with "gamahuche" and "cods."

 

[SkyBubble]

Here, thar be Dragons...

Still used in SCA.

 

[SkyBubble]

Here, thar be Dragons...

The Glendale (CA) Symphony Orchestra for many years was conducted by Carmen Dragon. His son Darryl was the Captain in The Captain and Tennille.

 

[SkyBubble]

No, but to quote Willy Wonka...

"Stop. Reverse that."

"Wait a minute. Cancel that. Reverse it."

 

[CalBishForNow]

That's where the term "test pattern" comes from.

This is the Wikipedia page about test patterns. Details vary depending on exactly where and when you're talking about, but there's always stripes or blocks of uniform color. If you're seeing that in the sky, seek medical attention.

This is the Wikipedia page about TV static or snow. That is what William Gibson was referring to. Looks kind of like a cloudy sky, right? Here's a YouTube video with 8 hours of it, including the noise that would accompany it on an actual analog TV. TVs with antennas could be tuned like a radio, and if you tuned them to a frequency no one was broadcasting on in your range, you'd get something like that.

It's funny, most of the time I think I'm younger than most people here, plenty of AHers talk about retirement stuff, but I feel old now if I have to explain this to people who never encountered it. I grew up in a rural area, with only three TV stations broadcasting in range of our house until I was a teenager and we got a satellite dish, so it was easy to see/hear TV static, not that anyone ever wanted to. But I guess if you grew up in a place with cable TV, you might never have encountered it even if you were older than me.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

This is a thread in a forum.

I know, right? People these days having threads in their Xitters and their Discords, when back in the day we put threads in needles and clothes!

 

[redgarters]

I think metaphors like that exist in a common historical memory, they don't really have to be lived by the reader to be understood. "The party was a blast, my nose packed with more white powder than Robespierre's wig..."

 

[spiralholly]

That's a 10-4, good buddy.