|k| clippings: 2015-05-23 — of visible light and bar soap

Today’s WORD describes another fun language group. Do you have any favorite retronyms? Or, better, words that will soon need one?

WORK

“Friedell caught the essential truth about people prone to catch-all theories: they aren’t in search of the truth, they’re in search of themselves.”

—Clive James
—from Cultural Amnesia

WORD(S)

retronym /RECH-roh-nim/. noun. A term (coined by journalist Frank Mankiewicz) for a new word created because the meaning of the original has become indefinite due to some new development. For example, the term acoustic guitar was created when the electric version was invented because guitar had become ambiguous. Similarly, fountain pen became needed only after the invention of the ballpoint. As you might expect with technology, sometimes retronyms are retronymed (or become obsolete), such as the case with telephone, rotary telephone and, perhaps someday, cell phone. See also: biological parent, manual transmission, live music, etc. More-or-less intuitively from Latin retrō (backwards, back) + Ancient Greek ὄνυμα (name, word).

“Frank Mankiewicz, president of National Public Radio, collects these terms and calls them ‘retronyms’—nouns that have taken an adjective to stay up-to-date and to fend off newer terms. Other retronyms include ‘hard-cover book’.” (William Safire)

“…The oldest retronym may be hard currency.” (D. Gary Miller)

“If a bakery on Purim advertises poppy-seed hamantaschen, that’s a retronym just as much as legitimate theater; analog watch and, I claim, cheese blintzes.” (Ranon Katzoff)

WEB

1. Amazing rare postcards reveal a vanished world

2. PaperBridge: A Load-Bearing Arch of Paper Sheets Spans an English Creek

3. Ian McMillan revisits the train journey at the heart of Philip Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings (Thanks, Reader N.!)

4. Restoration work begins on bodies of those who died when Vesuvius engulfed Pompeii. Some fantastic pictures.

5. Today in 1985, President Ronald Reagan awards Mother Teresa the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions in the field of humanitarianism. Other recipients that year included Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Count Basie, Chuck Yeager and others.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader N. shares a quote: “Clive James wrote: ‘common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.’ ¶ I’m not certain I absolutely agree with him, but I am enchanted by the quotation: ‘A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing’. What a nice way to put it.” — I love this quote too. In trying to find the original source I found that this quote is attributed often to Clive James, but more often to William James…it’s certainly something I could imagine Clive saying. The search continues.

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