the.com/carbon copy
A duplicate made by pressure and pigment, now a metaphor for anyone with no original ideas.
means An exact duplicate of someone or something, especially a person who looks or acts just like another.
from From the literal carbon paper used in typewriters — a thin sheet coated with pigment, sandwiched between pages, so the pressure of typing transferred a second, identical copy onto the page beneath. The abbreviation 'cc' on emails (as in, who's copied) is a direct descendant of this practice, and by the mid-1900s 'carbon copy' had already slid into figurative use for any close duplicate, especially a person eerily like another.
- origin
- carbon paper coated in pigment sandwiched between sheets
- etymology leak
- gave email its CC field
- irony
- the technology is obsolete, the insult survives
- usage shift
- now means unoriginal person, not just document