Some people do Duolingo lessons both ways – in my case from English to German and German to English, alternately. When signing into or out of Duolingo in German user interface, I found myself practicing words like “abmelden.” Then when I switch to back to English UI, I found myself paying more attention to the phrases “sign in” and “log out” then I normally would. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact I often go for a walk right after Duo, so I end up stating that as my intention out loud – “OK… I’m logging out.”
Anyway, the phrase “log out” and similar combos of one syllable words and “out” always make me think of the use of “black out” in Bauhaus’s “Lilies and Remains.” While your boy David J is fleeing from ghost-ridden Peter Murphy, he hides in a locker – number 13 – and “barely concealed but hopeful, BLACK OUT. BLACK OUT.”
So as I’m finishing my Duolingo at night, barely concealed but hopeful, I LOG OUT. LOG OUT.
This is all not terribly interesting, but people don’t talk about these experiences in media very often and I wonder how universal they are – or are not. Does practically everybody do this, at least sometimes in some ways, or is it only those on a grade toward Tourette’s or OCD or something? Feel like some of my bloggy comrades may have something to say about that.
–
EDIT TO ADD: The God Emperor of Doing this Intentionally to Make Their Song Immortal has to be Nelly, who must be invoked literally any time anyone ever says the phrase, “It’s getting hot in here.” Indeed, I wonder if he is profiting from global warming.
Bruce says
In the early Middle Ages, less literate people used to keep track of things such as payment of debts by making marks on a stick. I wonder if this led to the English phrase of keeping a “log” of things? From which we now log out from.
Jazzlet says
Bruce
I think the stick you are refering to was called a tally stick, thus “to keep a tally”. Logging in this sense was about measuring the speed of a boat – see from log(n.2) https://www.etymonline.com/word/log