Do you know what a Deadline really is?
My work has historically consisted of one deadline after another. Mostly imposed by the government, but some imposed by clients.
I was looking at my “to do” list for today which is mostly made up of items that have to be done by a certain date, and it got me thinking about the origin of the word “deadline”.
So, I did what we all do in today’s’ world. I Googled it and got quite a surprise for my efforts.
It appears that the derivation may have come from the American Civil War. In the prisons, there would be a line or boundary called the deadline. If a prisoner went beyond it, they would be shot dead.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Deadline.
According to Wikipedia, the word deadline was used in the early 1900s in the printing industry as the line in a printing press that delineated the end of the area that would print.Â
It was also used at that time in the publishing industry for the time by which material had to be submitted to make it into the newspaper.
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