Why the word "deadline" made me stop and think

I came across the word deadline today and I had to pause everything. WAIT! SORRY PEOPLE OF TRADER JOE'S. I thought to myself that the word deadline has very little connection to how we use it. It's one of those words that I wonder where the origin came from. Right? Dead and line together have many combinations. Someone will be dead, if and only if they cross that line. That one I get. Makes sense. A line that is dead could also be a way to interpret it. Although this one is hard to agree with because really, what possibly could a line that is dead really mean? Like, "The line at the grocery store was dead today, so I'll need those papers on my desk by morning." (By the way, do offices use paper anymore? I need to think about this. WAIT!)

Another way I thought about it was that you could see this hypothetical line and on one side of that line you are not dead, and on the other side you are totally dead. More dead than anyone has ever been before or will ever be. So dead, that they'll write an article about you in Time magazine. HA get it? Because time is how we measure life. Because we need a way to remind us that sometimes people die much younger than they deserve but if no one had an age, that guy who died on his prom night might not be remembered as someone who "died too young". Because we need time to put all of life that came before us into perspective. Because in the end, time is much too large for us to really grasp; I mean, think about how long you've been alive. Now multiply that by some stupid number that takes too long to write out all the zeros. Because time just is okay?! Geeeshh

Anyways.

I pictured deadline as an old scene from a western movie where a line is drawn in the sand sort-of-thing. But this also makes little sense when plugged back into the way the word deadline is used today. I don't imagine a task begin assigned and in small print it says, "Oh by the way, cross that line without having what I asked you to complete, and you'll cease to be a person. Go ahead. Try it. I have extra freezer space at home. Also a Costco sized bottle of Tapatio"

What am I doing? What am I even saying?!


But can you see what I'm getting at? Am I using too many euphemisms? I'm sorry. I get sidetracked. All I'm saying is that the word deadline probably means nothing at all what it was originally intended to mean. It first was used in 1864 so it probably originally meant to tie your slave to a line and drag them behind your ship until they drowned. Just a guess though.