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When I think a long time about a word, I begin to wonder where the hell it came from. What crazy, Wild West locution injected the word "deadline" into common usage?
Always leery of online dictionaries, I opened my Oxford American and this is what it said:
Definition 2: historical, a line drawn around a prison beyond which prisoners were liable to be shot.
I'd envisioned gunfighters staring each other down, playing chicken over a line drawn in the dust.
And why am I thinking of deadlines? Because a deadline I set for myself is always movable. But a deadline where others are expecting output? That is one I take seriously.
Always leery of online dictionaries, I opened my Oxford American and this is what it said:
Definition 2: historical, a line drawn around a prison beyond which prisoners were liable to be shot.
I'd envisioned gunfighters staring each other down, playing chicken over a line drawn in the dust.
And why am I thinking of deadlines? Because a deadline I set for myself is always movable. But a deadline where others are expecting output? That is one I take seriously.
