'It's hot in this car, roll down the windows'.
''Looks like there's sand blasting up ahead, roll up the (car) windows, will ya?'
Today I'm pondering the use of the verb 'roll' in regard to car windows. Isn't it fast becoming outdated? Most cars now have power-windows which go up or down by way of a .... what would you call it .... lever? button? switch?
The automatic control is certainly not a handle, and the action required to raise or lower the window is no longer a 'rolling'. Was it ever, though? Rolling a window up or down requires that one take hold of a handle, crank it it in one direction or the opposite direction - with a rotating action. That's what it always meant to 'roll the window' up or down. Though I now wonder if that action really qualifies as a 'roll'.
Hmmmmmmmm.
This could boggle the mind - if there weren't already so many other things in life that serve to boggle, which all of us could/should be more concerned with than this .... but since we're already on the subject....
Now that the majority of vehicles have electrically powered windows, has the mechanism remained the same? It appears that is so, and the only difference is whether the operation of raising and lowering the car window is done manually or via electricity ('push of the button'). If the mysterious inner workings of raising or lowering the panel of tempered glass hasn't changed, would it still be accurate (if it ever really was) to stay with 'roll the window'? If not, what should we be saying instead?
When I was a kid in the 1950's - 60's, my Mom used to call our refrigerator - the 'icebox'. Indeed - in her youth (Mom was born in 1918), cold storage space in the kitchen was, very simply, a box that contained food, kept cold by ice. This was before electrically run refrigerators became widely available to the masses. Keeping foods cold in an icebox required that from time to time, a huge block of ice be placed into it to keep things cold. When the ice gradually melted away, it was replaced by another big block of ice. Hence, the ice-man would cometh.
Even after she'd been enjoying electrically run refrigerators for a number of years, Mom continued to call the kitchen cold storage unit aka our fridge - the 'icebox'. Though decades have passed, my memory remains vivid and clear of Mom instructing my brothers and me to 'Put the leftovers in the icebox'.
'Roll down / roll up' ----- food for thought on a cold n' rainy December morn.
While our thinking caps are choogling along on the topic of rolling up/down - it's time for me to head to the kitchen to forage for lunch fixins' - in the icebox...
[car window crank image from: http://www.mustangproject.com/Catalog.aspx?category=0e4a35c1-13d3-4f45-bc14-04f1809ec9ac&sub=cd5a65df-9d5d-4bf4-9c02-7eb1f5682720]
