{"id":838,"date":"2019-05-23T17:57:43","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T21:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=838"},"modified":"2019-05-28T07:27:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T11:27:37","slug":"metaphor-of-the-month-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/05\/23\/metaphor-of-the-month-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaphor of the Month! Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/05\/deadline.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-839\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/05\/deadline.jpg\" alt=\"Deadline Sign\" width=\"1200\" height=\"796\" \/><\/a>For June 1, I&#8217;m on deadline for my and Brian McTague&#8217;s forthcoming book,\u00a0<em>Writing Centers at the Center of Change.\u00a0<\/em>I planned to take a weeklong break on this blog for Memorial Day, but I wanted to know more about the term &#8220;deadline.&#8221; In any case it serves me well, if a little early, for our June Metaphor. Where did this drop-dead-serious figure of speech first appear?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/47657?redirectedFrom=deadline&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED Online<\/a>, for once, provides no definitive etymology of the term! The most interesting candidate is a military one from the United States, with its earliest use given as 1864, during our Civil War. A &#8220;dead line&#8221; is &#8220;A line drawn around a military prison, beyond which a prisoner is liable to be shot down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The grim origin has been lost as we use &#8220;deadline&#8221; for everything now.<\/p>\n<p>To my knowledge, rarely have editors shot authors or publishers shot editors. That&#8217;s my cue. Back to work.<\/p>\n<p>Have a word or metaphor worth pondering? This blog will continue all summer.\u00a0Please nominate a word or metaphor useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Nick Youngson&#8217;s Creative Common Image<a href=\"http:\/\/www.picpedia.org\/highway-signs\/d\/deadline.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> courtesy of Picpedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For June 1, I&#8217;m on deadline for my and Brian McTague&#8217;s forthcoming book,\u00a0Writing Centers at the Center of Change.\u00a0I planned to take a weeklong break on this blog for Memorial Day, but I wanted to know more about the term &#8220;deadline.&#8221; In any case it serves me well, if a little early, for our June &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/05\/23\/metaphor-of-the-month-deadline\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Metaphor of the Month! Deadline<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87405,87399,40197],"tags":[87401],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary","tag-metaphor-of-the-month"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-dw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","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=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}