The Bloody History of 'Deadline'
Comments
vharuck
jacobolus
Apparently in POW camps the confederate prisoners made gutta-percha rings (also crosses, etc.) out of gutta-percha buttons, as a way to earn some money. https://archive.org/details/immortalcaptives00josl/?q=gutta-...
Seems like gutta-percha rings became a confederate symbol. https://esploro.libs.uga.edu/esploro/outputs/994936595870295... https://books.google.com/books?id=PUZyui6tt98C&dq=Gutta-perc...
drewcoo
That author:
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/heartsill-willia...
The mention of Mr. Lynch a line or so earlier was another threat of violence on the prisoners. "Lynch" was still relatively new at the time, too:
willwagner
I believe the same tree was used for manufacturing golf balls for a time. Before that golf balls were originally made with leather stuffed with feathers but transitioned to be the "gutty ball" for 50 years or so until they transitioned to rubber and more modern materials.
jacobolus
So how did the 'due date' meaning arise? Was it related in some way to the prison line?
Edit: according to wiktionary, in the 20th century it was used in the printing industry for a line on the bed of a press beyond which text wouldn't print, then by analogy as a time limit after which a newspaper story wouldn't make it into the paper. It's not clear if this sense was inspired by the Civil War prison dead lines, or made up independently.
mr_toad
I would guess it comes from contracts, being the date on which payment is due (owed). Due, or Dues has a historical meaning as a debt or obligation.
jacobolus
Note: the discussion is the etymology/usage of "deadline", not "due date".
levocardia
I would not be surprised if there was a totally separate etymology for deadline in the chronological sense. Publishing and journalism have plenty of related terms, e.g. a "kill fee" for an article that is submitted but not printed. Always seemed to me that the meaning and etymology was self-evident: a piece submitted after the line on the calendar or schedule would be "dead," i.e. killed and not published.
aporetics
> This concludes your exercise in pretending to not waste time while actually avoiding your deadline. Now: get back to work.
I suppose this could serve as the unspoken signature line in most communiques. Thanks MW
mortenjorck
This apparent etymology is fascinating, but the article left me disappointed in failing to actually connect the spatial dead-line to the chronological deadline.
There’s a hint that it started to become used metaphorically toward the end of the 19th century, but without any examples of early usage or even speculation as to how a spatial metaphor became a chronological metaphor, the origins of the modern usage remain a mystery.
runoisenze
For software projects, I prefer to call them “lifelines” :-)
makeitdouble
Honestly I like the"dead" part in deadline.
When someone comes with one, the first question should be "who's dead after that line ?". If no one actually dies, it's not a deadline, just a target release date.
falcor84
Shouldn't that be just "will someone actually die" rather than "who"? Or is it that your commitment to the deadline would really depend on the identity of the particular individual who's about to die?
makeitdouble
I actually think precision helps.
"someone will die" is hard to act on, "XXXX amount spent on this XMas campaign will be lost and our partner X will go under" is a lot more valuable information, and potentially helps to adjust priorities too make X whole if other parts need to be sacrificed.
ThisIsAWhatWhat
"The guard lines are drawn in; making our play grounds much smaller and cutting us off from our best well of water, this is done for no other purpose under the sun but to interfere with our only enjoyment and to grind us to the lowest depth of subjugation."
This was written by an imprisoned soldier. Who thinks that a depressing number of college students today would be incapable of this writing quality?
wavemode
"quality" is subjective. The passage comes across as poetic to us today, sure, but that's just how people spoke in that region and time period.
Some future civilization may read our writings today and similarly marvel at its archaic style.
pona-a
Yes, but I believe there are some more objective traits that define good writing beyond just style. It's the use of metaphor, more precise choice of wording, overall speaking less in logical predicates and more so in powerful impressions.
I heavily doubt one would read an old instruction manual or an employee handbook with overflowing glee just because it used an archaic style, at best maybe briefly consider the novelty of a few out-of-use words before moving on.
becquerel
How many people back then were outright illiterate?
_spduchamp
'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' - Douglas Adams
sph
Waiting for the PRs renaming any `deadline` variable because it's potentially triggering to some "concerned parties"
stevage
Disappointing the author didn't attempt to connect the two meanings.
I was curious about this line in one of the letters cited:
>Gutapercha ring making is all the go now by the men and some of them are making really beautiful ones.
So wikipediaed gutapercha, which turns out to be a tree. The same name is used for a latex made from the tree. This material made undersea cables possible in the early days.
But I was curious: why rings? Well, it might have something to do with the caning of Charles Sumner in 1856. Brooks, a pro-slavery U.S. representative beat Sumner, an abolitionist representative, nearly to death on the Senate floor with a gutapercha cane. Brooks' colleagues then wore necklaces with rings made from the shattered cane. So that letter might've come from a Confederate soldier.