Mixed up sayings for a new era?

[Ashrem]

What have you got? Any favourite sayings that have been modified in order to apply in a more modern sense? I had a particular one in mind about glass houses that caused me to wonder about this. I won't post it (at least yet), because it might be taken as something other than actual curiosity about language fluidity.

 

[Vergazi]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but it drives me batty when journalists and pundits say "honing in on" when they mean to say "homing in on." I have heard various college students say this too so I guess that few of them were paying attention in English class that day.

 

[Ashrem]

I think that's more the standard changing of sayings by people who aren't aware of the error, while I was thinking of deliberate changes. One example is "finding a needle in a digital haystack" The original phrase doesn't need the modification, because it's you can't actually have a needle in a digital haystack, and it was already a comparison between something difficult and something unrelated but difficult.

 

[shimmerfly]

Do you mean like old idioms... "grasping at straws"?
Original meaning was for a drowning man to grasp at grass (straw) was better than nothing.
Now it's used more like guessing at a meaning or to put an end to something such as an argument?
I'm grasping at straws for your meaning.

 

[Ashrem]

I've never heard grasping at straws as guessing at meaning, I understand it more in the original sense where one is trying to make a point where there is insufficient data to really make one. A weak "grasping at straws" (but the only thing I can come up with right now) would be something like buying more lottery tickets because you need more money.

Things like:

Phish me once, shame on you, fish me twice, shame on me
You can't make on omelette without posting a few pictures
Out of Newsfeed, out of mind
People who live in glass houses shouldn't report other people's posts.
Don't put all your data on one hard drive.