buggy whip
- noun
- /ˈbʌɡi wɪp/
- Archaic
- Sorry, but if it takes 2 hours for Johnie to make a buggy whip and his wages are $10.00/hr, you have $20.00 plus materials plus profit.
- making buggy whips
So right the the car, you know, the automobile displaced a lot of carriage drivers and people who sold buggy whips and blacksmiths who made horseshoes.
- So right the the car, you know, the automobile displaced a lot of carriage drivers and people who sold buggy whips and blacksmiths who made horseshoes.
Examples
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The invention of the automobile rendered the once-essential buggy whip a mere relic of the past.
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Why did we, you know, make the buggy whip industry obsolete?
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Kind of like the last buggy whip manufacturer.
Blog text (16) -
What would we do with all those buggy whips?
Blog text (17) -
Problem is, nobody wants buggy whips anymore.
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And I'm expecting my heavy investments in the buggy whip sector to help me through the recession.
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Those who can't or won't change with it will be making buggy whips tomorrow.
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By buying stocks, the average citizen takes part in determining which capital investments will prevail in the future and which will go the way of the buggy whip.
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So right the the car, you know, the automobile displaced a lot of carriage drivers and people who sold buggy whips and blacksmiths who made horseshoes.
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As technology advanced, the demand for buggy whips dwindled, highlighting how quickly some products can become obsolete.
Synonyms
A short whip used to guide a horse when a person sits on it
A long leather strap used to guide or urge horses
A short leather whip for guiding horses
Antonyms
How Outdated
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is literally compositional — a learner who knows 'buggy' and 'whip' can infer a whip used with a horse-drawn buggy, so the basic concrete sense is transparent. However, its common metaphorical extension to mean 'a symbol of something outdated or obsolete' is a cultural/idiomatic shift not predictable from the parts, making the overall expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
Buggy whip comes from a simple tool: a buggy was a small horse carriage and a whip was used to make the horse go. When motor cars replaced horse buggies, the buggy whip was no longer needed, so the term came to mean 'something outdated'.