I love the English language! Not only is it magically absorbent, it diligently recycles itself. Here are just three examples of words that morphed from what they meant into what they mean:

- The phrase dial the phone was once literal. There was an actual dial, a round perforated disk, on the face of the phone, which you pushed around with your finger. It was never speedy (especially for me, since where I grew up phone numbers included lots of 9’s). No one truly dials anymore, but we still use the phrase.

- And we still say CC, to mean emailing someone a copy of a message. CC started off standing for carbon copy. In the olden days, you’d need to take two sheets of letterhead and sandwich a piece of carbon paper between them. Then you’d crank them into your typewriter; as you typed, the impact of the keys transferred the carbon on to the second sheet, making a carbon copy. Xerox finally put a stop to that nonsense; then came email. But we still go merrily CC-ing along.

- And consider the symbol @. For centuries it was accounting shorthand meaning at the rate of or each as in 10 bushels @ $1.50 = $15.00. In the 1970s it was appropriated into Internet-speak to mean located at. Here’s a case where the new meaning didn’t replace the old: @ now does double-duty. It’s easily understood to mean @ $20 or lindsay@blueribbonwriting.com.

There are probably plenty of other phrases that we still use, which meant one thing way-back-when but have morphed into something slightly, or completely, different. Drop me a line and let me know which ones you notice.

Lindsay Gower of BlueRibbonWriting helps business people with every aspect of business communication, marketing collateral, web content, business plans, training materials, and sales and marketing presentations. She also coaches those who want to hone their own writing skills. You can contact her at lindsay@blueribbonwriting.com.