buggy whip

English

Etymology

In the twentieth century, after the advent of widespread automobile use and diminished horse use, the buggy whip became a symbol of obsoleted technologies and disrupted business models. Popularized by German-American economist and professor at Harvard Business School Theodore Levitt in 1960.

Noun

buggy whip (plural buggy whips)

  1. (historical) A horsewhip with a long stiff shaft and a relatively short lash, used for driving a horse harnessed to a buggy or other small open carriage.
    Hypernyms: horsewhip < whip
    Coordinate term: see at whip § Hyponyms
    • 1907, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson”, in Heart of the West, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company for Review of Reviews Co., →OCLC, page 259:
      When his strawberries were beginning to ripen Dry Valley bought the heaviest buggy whip in the Santa Rosa store. He sat for many hours under the live oak tree plaiting and weaving in an extension to its lash.
    • 1917, Jack London, Michael, Brother of Jerry:
      Rushed to the springboard and the leap, always, after the take-off, in mid-air, they had to encounter an assistant who stood underneath, an extraordinarily long buggy-whip in hand, and lashed them vigorously.
  2. (figurative) An obsolete product or technology.
    went the way of the buggy whip
    • [2010 January 9, Randall Stross, “Failing Like a Buggy Whip Maker? Better Check Your Simile”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 18 July 2017:
      Need to describe a hand-held mathematical calculator? Try “buggy whip.” A typewriter? A VCR? They’ve been called buggy whips, too. Even newspapers have received that label. (That one hurts.)]
    • 2012 June 12, Rebecca J. Rosen, quoting Thomas Keane, “Pay Phones: A Technology for the Poor That's About to Get Left Hanging”, in The Atlantic‎[2], archived from the original on 20 July 2015:
      “We're sort of the last guy standing on pay phones,” [Thomas] Keane told USA Today. “I call it my buggy-whip strategy. I'm sure somebody somewhere is happily making buggy whips at some level.
    • 2025 October 11, Mark Wakefield, quotee, “Carmakers steer back towards more lucrative petrol vehicles”, in FT Weekend, Companies & Markets, page 10:
      “The danger is that in the long run, does this become the buggy whip challenge?” said Mark Wakefield, global automotive market lead at AlixPartners.

See also

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.