Just found out the origin of "grandfathered in".

The term originated in late nineteenth-century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of U.S. Southern states, which created new requirements for literacy tests, payment of poll taxes, and/or residency and property restrictions to register to vote. States in some cases exempted those whose ancestors (grandfathers) had the right to vote before the American Civil War, or as of a particular date, from such requirements. The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent African-American former slaves and their descendants from voting, but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote. Although these original grandfather clauses were eventually ruled unconstitutional, the terms grandfather clause and grandfather have been adapted to other uses.

What else has a problematic history you didn't realize until later?

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    “Off the reservation”. Like it’s obvious on its face if you think about it for two seconds, but it’s just an idiom, I never thought about it.

      • glimmer_twin [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        What the other guy said, it’s something you hear in like a cop movie where the chief says to the maverick hero cop “you’re off the reservation Johnson!” because he’s been doing maverick cop stuff.

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I'm not super familiar with the idiom in common parlance, how is it usually used?