Phrases and words no longer used or completely lost.

Ever heard the phrase: look a gift horse in the mouth? Or what about: down to brass tacks. Feel free to search them (in common language, the first means take a gift without examining it for flaws, while the other means you have nothing left). My point is that these lost favor with the English population long ago due to the fact that they reference common situations that no longer have any bearing with modern living. Phrases are like that--they change, grow and evolve.

I'm reminded of an excellent episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Pickard gets stranded on a planet with an alien he wants to make a treaty with, but there is no common language or magical universal translator (a silly concept anyway, so the writers had to make sure the good Captain couldn't have one). The episode is called, "Darmok." The fun thing is that the alien uses a language built entirely of phrases like the ones I used before. As an audience, we learn along with the Captain as these two disparate races learn to communicate. It's a fascinating idea, and I wish I saw it used more often.

The phrases we use now will eventually die and fall from use. When people dig up the things of this current culture, they won't have any concept of why these things mattered to us. Imagine how confused a future human will be when they see comedians and parodies ... well, because we all know future people have absolutely no sense of humor at all, right?

- M