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Stop the music!/the presses!

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ESL Forum | English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms

Be headed vs. be heading | Use of Genitive: "Tom's brother's car"

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Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:26 am Stop the music!/the presses!

Hi, Could you tell me if the music and presses in 'Stop the music!/the presses!' refer to noise? Why presses? Thank you. haihao

Haihao
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Joined: 26 Oct 2006
Posts: 1389
Location: Japan

Fri Feb 09, 2007 11:37 am Stop the music!/the presses!

Hi,

I would suggest these presses are printing presses.

This line reminds me of a poem by W H Auden:

Quote:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put cr?pe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever: 'I was wrong'

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good

A
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Sat Feb 10, 2007 18:22 pm Stop the music!/the presses!

Haihao wrote:

Could you tell me if the music and presses in 'Stop the music!/the presses!' refer to noise? Why presses?

Stop the presses comes from the newspaper industry, when, in the old days, an enormously important event would suddenly occur, and it was necessary to stop the printing presses and change the front page of the newspaper that was already being printed. You can often hear this shouted by managers of newspapers in old American movies. Nowadays we say, "Stop the presses!" to mean, "Stop! Pay attention! Something important and unexpected has happened!"

Stop the music comes from variety shows in the days before movies. Dance routines and comedy skits were often accompanied by music. When something was going very wrong with the performance -- either one of the musicians was playing wrong, one of the performers on stage hadn't come out, or there is some other problem -- someone might shout, "Wait! Stop the music!" and the performance had to start over again. Now we might use that expression to mean that we suddenly have to stop some team effort and start it over again because one of the participants is not doing his work correctly.

Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)

Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4400
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA

Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:27 am Stop the music!/the presses!

Thank you very much, Jamie, and I am really satisfied.

Haihao
I'm a Communicator ;-)

Joined: 26 Oct 2006
Posts: 1389
Location: Japan

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Be headed vs. be heading | Use of Genitive: "Tom's brother's car"

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