I was just thinking over the holiday how some words and phrases from not so long ago have different meanings today.  I had this thought relative to a specific Christmas gift I purchased for my wife.

For Instance in 1882 in Texas if you said, Let's get a new team for the coach," what would that have meant?

What did we have for teams who did we have for coaches in 1882. Very few would be the answer.  Organized professional sports were, in many cases, still decades away.

Perhaps it litteraly meant, getting some new horses for the Concord Coach covered wagon, that helped tame the west.

My great grandfather was responsible for the City "Teams" in Exeter, NH at the turn of the century.
"Teams" had a very different meaning for him then for me.

This Concord Coach, circa 1852 appeared at the New York World's Fair of 1939 and was later put on display at the Boston & Maine Railroad Station in Concord, New Hampshire. It is now in the collection of the Museum of New Hampshire History at Eagle Square in Concord, N.H.

How many times when getting into a car have you said, "Shotgun."  Do you know where the phrase comes from.  It comes from the very people that navigated these covered wagons with their "Teams (horses)."  As protection of life and property was a very upfront and personal endeavor. 

I wonder if anyone getting into this wagon shouted, "Shotgun," as they were boarding.  I doubt it because it would have meant you were proclaiming your responsibility as the primary defender of the journey.

Or even today, bringing me to my personal Christmas shopping efforts, while shopping with my teenage daughter she noticed a woman wearing Coach.  I asked my daughter, maybe that is what we should get Mom."  She said, "sounds like an idea, let's go to the Coach outlet and see what they have."



Not Really what I had in mind.