The Top 5 Outdated Sayings That Won’t Make Sense in the Future

One of the nice things about famous sayings is that a lot of them are old fashioned. Many sayings harken back to a simpler time and in doing so, are completely anachronistic. In fact, most popular sayings involve some sort of anachronism that’s completely archaic to modern times. Here are the top 5 sayings that are soon to be outdated and difficult to explain to future people a few decades from now:

5. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

Most often when you see smoke there is some sort of fire occurring that’s creating the smoke. However, with the innovation of electronic cigarettes or e-cigs, the smoke you see may actually be vapor and there can be no fire at all. E-cigs use heat without actual combustion to produce the vapor and this activity of “vaping” is only getting more popular. Maybe the new version will be something like “Where there’s vape, there’s a battery.”

Where there's vape there's poison.

4. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

In the future people might still read, but if they do it won’t be in physical book form. In an age where the first thing people associate with the word “book” is “Facebook” I think it’s obvious where we are trending as a society. It’s likely this phrase will morph into “Don’t judge a Blu-Ray by its case” or “Don’t judge an e-book by its profile pic on Amazon.”

This isn't about what you'd think, it's about scissoring.

3. “You sound like a broken record.”

This is a saying that’s already endangered in 2015. Very few people still listen to music on vinyl records so you could say this to a young person today and they’d know what you meant but only because they were told. In the future, no one will have any idea what this means because no one will know what a record sounds like when it’s working properly much less broken. Maybe it’ll change to “You sound like a corrupted mp4 file.”

How many times do I have to tell you to clean up your damn vinyl collection!

2. “Rain on your parade.”

As the state of California knows these days, water is becoming rather scarce in today’s climate. Countries like India and China will experience the most drastic effects of freshwater shortage in the coming decades, but it will be a fully global issue. When someone “rains on your parade” these days it’s considered a bad thing, but in a few decades, or even today if you’re in California, you’ll beg someone to rain on your parade. This is not going to be synonymous with anything negative, it may even change into the exact opposite. You’ll hear people in the future saying things like “Hank, please come to the party! You know people love when you rain on their parade!” and it won’t be said in a sarcastic tone like it is today.

There aren't a lot of parades in Afghanistan.

And the number one most outdated saying of the future is...

1. “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

When your parents told you “Money doesn’t grow on trees” it meant money wasn’t ubiquitous like the leaves of a tree. Money had to be earned or searched out. Well that will still be true about money in the future, but with deforestation continuing to be a major problem, trees, just like water are due to become a rare commodity. In a future without rainforests, where many populated areas resemble deserts, you could very well say with a straight face “Money might as well grow on trees.”

If inflation gets really bad they'll start saying "Trees don't grow on money!"