go the way of the dodo

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English[edit]

WOTD – 17 September 2020

Etymology[edit]

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, which is believed to have become extinct in the 17th century due to human activity.

Pronunciation[edit]

Verb[edit]

go the way of the dodo (third-person singular simple present goes the way of the dodo, present participle going the way of the dodo, simple past went the way of the dodo, past participle gone the way of the dodo)

  1. (idiomatic) To go extinct or become obsolete or defunct; to fall out of common practice or use; to become a thing of the past.
    Synonyms: go the way of the dinosaurs, go the way of the dodo bird; see also Thesaurus:die
    Now that word-processing has caught on, typewriters have gone the way of the dodo.
    • 1854 November 11, “No Motu; or, Reef-rovings in the South Seas. A Narrative of Adventures at the Hawaiian, Georgian and Society Islands. By Edward T. Perkins. New York, Pudney & Russell; London, Trübner & Co.”, in The Athenæum: Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, number 1411, London: […] J[ohn] Francis. [...], →OCLC, page 1361, column 1:
      The Polynesian population, for instance, is on the wane—wearing out—as the Red Man is—as the whale is,—going the way of the dodo, and so many other things.
    • 1861 November 23, J. Hamilton Fyfe, “High Days in the Temple”, in The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume V, number 126, New York, N.Y.: Leavitt, Trow, & Co., →OCLC, page 610, column 2:
      It is long since that disorderly potentate [the Lord of Misrule] went the way of the Dodo, and hippocras has become almost as mythical as ambrosia; but, once upon a time, they played a prominent part in legal education.
    • 1869 September 18, “Cattle at Sea”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 28, number 725, London: […] David Jones, […], →OCLC, page 380, column 1:
      [W]e confess that we should feel a lively satisfaction if we could see the sailor who set his dog at the helpless mass of ovine misery [sheep transported by ship across the English Channel] properly tied down in a conspicuous place on the deck of his ship, stripped to his waist, and then treated to such an allowance of the cat-of-nine-tails (if that animal has not gone the way of the dodo and the great auk) as would make him hate the taste of mutton for the rest of his natural life.
    • 1876 July, “Art. VII.—1. Histoire de France, jusqu’à 1794. Par Jules Michelet, Professeur Suppléant à la Faculté des Lettres. Paris: Hachette. 1860. [et al.]”, in The London Quarterly Review, volume XLVI, number XCII, London: […] [T]he proprietors, […], →OCLC, page 440:
      We must have game laws for the Arctic seals, and a "close time" for seals as well as for gulls, or else all these animals will go the way of the dodo.
    • 1964 May 27, Mike Mansfield (witness), “Statement of Hon. Mike Mansfield, a U.S. Senator from the State of Montana”, in Treasury–Post Office Departments and Executive Office Appropriations for 1965: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Eighty-eighth Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 10532 […], Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 500:
      If the silver dollar goes the way of the dodo and the whooping crane, much of the glamour and the polish and the distinction which any entity of the Government has in celebrating its centennial will be gone.
    • 2003, Gary Marshall, “Music Technology from A to Z”, in The Cut the Crap! Guide to Music Technology, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire: Artemis Editions, →ISBN, page 110:
      Developed by the same people who invented MP3, mp3PRO is a new format that offers better sound quality than normal MP3s. However, at the time of writing it seems that music fans couldn't care less, and mp3PRO may well go the way of the dodo, the 8-track cartridge and George Michael's solo career.
    • 2007, Robert A. Rosenstone, “Space for the Bird to Fly”, in Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, Alun Munslow, editors, Manifestos for History, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 11:
      [H]istorians have turned from the past to the future, concerned with what will happen to their professional calling in the decades and centuries to come, fearful that in this age of instant communication and gratification, when an era as recent as the sixties can seem to our students as remote as the Wars of the Roses was to us in our college days, that history is going the way of the dodo.
    • 2009, Daniel Briere, Pat Hurley, “Treating Your Ears to Music”, in Home Theater for Dummies (For Dummies), 3rd edition, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, part II (Getting Video and Music into Your Theater: Source Devices), page 69:
      For most of the world, the LP has unfortunately gone the way of the dodo. But although LPs are far from the public eye, they've never really gone away.
    • 2009, Andrew Price, “Corporate Collateral: Globalization and the Efficiency Delusion”, in Slow-tech: Manifesto for an Overwound World, London: Atlantic Books, →ISBN, page 89:
      If you imagine, then, that the travelling journeyman is simply an anachronism – and went the way of the Dodo, or the Luddites – there would, admittedly, be more than a grain of truth in your reaction. But you would be only partly right.
    • 2009 April 1, Greg Stott, “Flying”, in Notes from Beyond the Fringe: Collected Works of Greg Stott, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 24:
      The semi-formality of that era, along with any sense of attaining even a modicum of comfort in anything but first class [of an aeroplane], has gone the way of the Dodo.
    • 2013, Andreas F. Clenow, “Year by Year Review”, in Following the Trend: Diversified Managed Futures Trading, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, →ISBN, page 207:
      If your prime broker goes the way of the dodo, you can realistically expect that all cash on the books will be gone in the same instance and in the worst case scenario you will also be unable to liquidate your futures positions for days or perhaps weeks.

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