While home last Sunday, our living room was a picturesque scene with Sunday football on the television and Karen and Joe reading The Times. More specifically, Joe was reading The New York Times Magazine and found an interesting article on the Retronym (written by William Safire)
The Retronym? Well, the retronym is defined in the article as a noun and a modifier that specifies the original meaning of the noun.
Now that the technical stuff is out of the way, here was the fun part of the article and my favorite retronyms:
Noun: Guitar Retronym: Acoustic Guitar.
Now that electric guitars are standard, when someone says guitar you assume electric unless the retronym Acoustic Guitar is used.
Noun: Book Retronym: Hard Cover Book
Books use to be all hard cover. Now with the world of mass production we're all use to books mostly being soft cover. Now to specify a hard cover book one must say it!
Noun: Watch Retronym: Analog Watch
With the invention of the digital watch came the name analog watch to describe what was once just a watch.
Noun: Game Retronym: Day Game
Baseball games use to be during the day. Now that Baseball games are at night, when a game is during the day people refer to it as a day game.
Check out the article to see more about retronyms with mail, phones, milk and others!
1 comment:
That's kind of cool. I've never really thought about stuff like that before!
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