Oct 23, 2011
This week's theme, back-formations, made me think of one of my favorite linguistic concepts: retronyms. A retronym is a word that renames an existing object in order to distinguish it from a newer version of the object that has since come into being. Some examples of retronyms are 2-D movie, analog clock, black-and-white television, brick-and-mortar store, conventional oven, face-to-face meeting, handwritten, landline, live performance, manual typewriter, pre-war architecture, rotary telephone, silent film, snail-mail, and vinyl record.
From: David Danzig (david danzig.com) Subject: back-formations and retronyms
