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Old 06-22-2012, 08:18 AM   #22
Steven Lyle Jordan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn View Post
I tried to illustrate my thinking by using examples using the expression "tons of...", I'm more interested in what other kind of idioms that will become obsolete because of the shift to digital. In an analog world we use concrete things, in the digital it is more abstract, hence the need for new idioms. Don't get hung up on tons.
There's literally no telling. Idioms become popular in random ways, usually a phrase or comment from a celebrity or other icon that the public spontaneously decides whether or not it likes enough to be repeated.

How did "yadda yadda" become popular again in the American lexicon? Being used on an episode of Seinfeld. "Beam me up" came from a short-lived sci-fi show that almost no one saw during its original run. "Tune in" came from years of entire nations using dial-controlled radios and TV sets. Generation X was coined from a popular book. Etc.

Today, if things had been different, we could just as easily have been saying "I have tanks worth of books" for years (maybe Mark Spitz would have started that), and wondering why people today don't use "tons."

But the one thing that is clear is that the idiom doesn't necessarily have to make real sense; it only has to be understood by those who hear you use it. So the shift to digital may give us new idioms--in fact, I'd argue that "digital" has in itself become a new idiom, as it and its doppleganger, "analog," have become synonymous for "new" and "old"--but we'll probably get new idioms from other sources as well.
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