Many of the figures of speech you hear every day are based on old, obsolete technologies. It’s high time we stop saying “sounds like a broken record” (perhaps, “repeating like a buffering song” is more relevant). Likewise, “back to the drawing board” could  more accurately be “back to the iPad.” Inflation should have turned “worth a dime a dozen” into perhaps “a dollar a dozen.” But a few of the most common figures of speech are based on cars or other modes of transportation. And if cars haven’t made them obsolete, they will very soon.

Tune in

Ever been told to tune in to a conversation someone’s having? The phrase comes from radios, tuning through the static to lock onto various channels. Later, televisions did the same thing. Now we choose our media and stream it—no tuning in needed.

Roll up the car window

We’ll often ask passengers, “Want me to roll up or roll down your window?” This was accurate back when car windows had a hand crank that you literally rolled over and over to adjust the glass’s position. Today, we simply hit a button and the glass glides up and down. “Press up my window” would be more accurate.

Crank it over

You know what else used to have a hand crank? Car engines. Before the modern electric starter, firing up your car meant grabbing the crank in front of your bumper and putting your back into it to spin the engine by hand. This led to figures of speech such as crank the engine, crank it over, and crank it up. These might have been more accurate when you at least turned a key to start the engine. But with modern start/stop buttons, a more accurate saying might be “press the engine.”

Get in gear

There are many variations on this one: shift into high gear, get your rear in gear. While many modern internal combustion cars still use gears in their automatic transmissions, few drivers pay much attention to what gear their vehicles are in. An increasing number of cars have CVT units, which use cones instead of gears. And EVs often have no transmission at all. A more accurate modern saying might be “get in drive.”

Grind my gears

If get in gear is slightly outdated, grind my gears—a saying for something that frustrates or annoys you—is completely outdated. In an old stick-shift transmission, poor driving could result in the gears grinding against one another. The resulting noise was certainly annoying, and a bit embarrassing. But with manual transmissions going the way of the dodo, this phrase should probably go extinct too.

Kickstart your day

Kickstart is a great word, and its energetic feel has inspired many sayings—from kickstart your day to one of Mötley Crüe’s best songs, “Kickstart My Heart.” While early cars had a hand crank to turn the motor over, early motorcycles had a kickstart lever the rider jumped onto to fire up the bike. But today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a new motorcycle without a modern electric starter.

Hold your horses

This popular 1800s phrase once meant “rein in” your horses, because you had to pull back on the reins to slow them down. Hold your horses later became a popular figure of speech that meant “slow down” or “think twice before acting.” But now that cars are the dominant mode of transportation, a more accurate version might be “pump the brakes.”

Get off your high horse

This phrase means to stop acting superior, arrogant, or self-righteous. It may come from a time when only the rich had horses—or large horses. It conjures images of some king or lord on a huge warhorse looking down his nose at peasants on donkeys or on foot. But no one rides horses anymore. When they do, drivers might honk at them to get out of the way and look down on them. So what would be the modern version? Perhaps “get off your lifted truck”—or even “get off your high Segway.”

Beat a dead horse

We often use beat a dead horse—or even whip a dead horse—for someone who just won’t let an old argument go. Obviously, whipping a dead horse is useless, because no matter how badly you want it to go faster, it’s not going anywhere. But now that horses are obsolete, a better figure of speech might be “flog a totaled car.”

Look under the hood

This is a figure of speech for taking a peek at how something really works, often for diagnostic purposes. A software engineer with a failing app might call reviewing the code “taking a look under the hood.” Technically, it’s still accurate—but in the age of EVs, there will just be a “front trunk” under the hood, with the motors elsewhere.

Run out of steam

Steam machinery, such as locomotives, used a large fire to boil water, capturing that expanding steam and using its pressure to drive pistons. Running out of steam means running out of energy—but it’s been obsolete for a century.

Running on fumes

The internal combustion version of running out of steam refers to having so little liquid gasoline left in your tank that your car is just burning the vapors left over. But as more vehicles go electric, “running out of juice”—or “running on a dead battery”—will be more applicable.

Burning the midnight oil

Cars take oil, so burning the midnight oil is a car saying, right? Wrong. It refers to the days of oil lamps and means you’re working or studying late. But we’re long past oil lamps, so I’d suggest burning the “midnight lithium-ion”—or LEDs.

Jumping on the bandwagon

This just means joining a popular trend or activity. It refers to when horses pulled bands atop wagons through parades or on tour. A modern parade version might be “hop on the band float,” while a modern touring act version might be “hop in the band tour bus.”

Upset the apple cart

This saying, which means spoil a plan or disturb the status quo, probably refers to knocking over a street vendor’s cart of apples for sale. But when was the last time you saw a street vendor selling apples? It may be time to start saying “tip the hot dog stand.”