{"id":2499,"date":"2025-06-05T17:20:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T21:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2025-06-05T17:22:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T21:22:59","slug":"metaphor-of-the-month-burner-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2025\/06\/05\/metaphor-of-the-month-burner-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaphor of the Month! Burner Phone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pile<\/a>Many pleasure-travelers are opting for a burner phone<\/a> this year, a generic prepaid device that does. not contain their personal information. So are many corporate and governmental employees traveling to surveillance states like China.<\/p>\n

But where did the idea of a phone we might burn up when done come from? The OED dates the term back to 1996<\/a> as first usage, the era of my first phone, a flip-phone called a TracPhone. The Rap lyrics are so dirty I can’t quote them here. But suffice to say, the brains at The OED found this first usage.<\/p>\n

We already have what I would call “burner cars” (in the Upper Midwest, they are called Winter Beaters) and “burner clothes” (tragically unsustainable fast-fashion clothing). I suppose some readers may even have “burner friends.” Don’t tell me.<\/p>\n

I have an inkling that we’ll be using the adjective “burner” in many more new metaphors in the times to come. Frequency of use for our metaphor continues to rise on a steady slope.<\/p>\n

TracPhone is still around. I’ll get one for my next international trip. I’ll only want basic browsing, texts, voice, and the ability to take photos. I don’t use much social media with on the road.<\/p>\n

Given reports of Americans’ social-media histories being demanded when they re-enter the US, I’m taking a “burner phone” to Canada next year. Frankly, my Constitutionally protected speech is none of TSA’s or Customs and Enforcement’s darned business, unless I advocate something illegal. And I don’t do that.<\/p>\n

Safe travels.<\/p>\n

Send me words and metaphors that express your freedom of speech by emailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Creative-Commons image: courtesy of Adrian Clark<\/a> at Flickr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many pleasure-travelers are opting for a burner phone this year, a generic prepaid device that does. not contain their personal information. So are many corporate and governmental employees traveling to surveillance states like China. But where did the idea of a phone we might burn up when done come from? The OED dates the term … Continue reading Metaphor of the Month! Burner Phone<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87405,87399,40197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Ej","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2503,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/2503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}