I like this post by Marcin Wichary in which he looks for remnant expressions in our language which are based on technologies that no longer exist, but that we still use. A typical example is “dialing a number”. We dial a number — or dial someone — even though dials disappeared from phones decades ago. And we hang up […]
Tag Archives: language
L’esprit de l’escalier
Now this sounds familiar: “L’esprit de l’escalier” is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late. According to Wikipedia: During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Denis Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, […]