scribblerjmz (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scribblerjmz) wrote2017-04-30 10:34 am
scribblerjmz) wrote2017-04-30 10:34 am
Deadlines
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.