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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

These are sometimes referred to as "dead metaphors" when you lose the mental connection to what originally inspired it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_metaphor

What a neat little reference. I love finding out that someone, somewhere, has taken the time to put a little sticker on something and say "I think I'll call this idea X".

You should name that phenomenon

"Bootstrap" from which we get "booting up" and "reboot" is another one[0]

[0]: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=bootstrap

Ah that one is only semi dead for me. Hadn't realised that bootstraps weren't the same as bootlaces though.

It's pretty not-dead for me, as there has been a recent trend to call out the notion of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" as a fantasy, in a similar vein as calling out the notion of being "self-made" as unlikely -- i.e., virtually everyone got where they are with some help, not by themselves.

Of course, the computer metaphor involves electronics that do, in fact, figure out how to start without external assistance, despite the human metaphor tending to be a myth!

I wonder if we could add "record scratch noise" into the dead metaphors category, or if we'd need to make a new category for audio relics instead of written ones.

I'd say that metaphor not quite dead yet. A few generations are younger than CDs, but vinyl still appears in a lot of pop culture (in no small part thanks to nostalgia). I'd wager most teens would know that the vinyl scratch sound is indeed from vinyl, even though most would never have touched a vinyl disc. Dead media, but the metaphor is still fresh enough...

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