Everyone knows what an anachronism is, right? “A person or a thing that is chronologically out of place.” (Merriam-Webster) One type of anachronism is when a book or movie is set in a particular historical period but includes features that are chronological impossibilities. There are lots of examples of anachronisms in movies, such as kilts in the movie Braveheart or the modern Canadian flag in a scene from the movie The Untouchables. Not to mention the Starbucks cup that got into a scene in Game of Thrones. (An article in Variety has a collection of cinematic anachronisms, but there are plenty more listed elsewhere.)
Today I want to explore two closely related terms, one of which I’m sort of boosting. The first term is the word anachronicon, a word that’s used by Josh Bernoff on his blog to refer to icons that allude to old technologies. Bernoff suggests that he invented the term (“I propose that we call these anachronicons“). It’s a pretty obvious portmanteau word, but I didn’t find any other reference to it. For me it doesn’t flow easily off the tongue, but I’m getting used to it.
You’re surely familiar with some of these anachronicons. A classic example is the Save icon in many apps that shows a floppy diskette:
In his blog entry, Bernoff mentions other anachronicons, like the clipboard used for the Copy command, the scissors used for the Cut command, the envelope used to indicate email, the handset used to represent a phone (plus variations that are used for the dial and terminate commands), and the old-school video camera used to indicate video.
It isn’t just in computer interfaces. Many icons for “television” show rabbit-ear antennas. I did a search for “icon film,” and a lot of the results are icons based on movie projectors and on film stock, the type that has sprocket holes in the side:
Search for “icon nurses” and see how many of the icons feature a nurse’s cap, something nurses haven’t worn for decades, at least not in the US.
Anyway, you get the idea. As Bernoff says, “Once you start looking, anachronicons are everywhere.”
An anachronicon is an image, obviously. But what about words that hark back to something out of date? As with anachronicons, there are many of these. No one literally dials or hangs up a phone anymore. You don’t tune in to your favorite radio station. Most devices don’t require you to turn them on. When you cc someone on an email, you are waaay past the era of copies made on actual carbon paper. It’s unlikely that you roll up the window in your car. An album stopped being the package for recorded music when 78-rpm recordings were supplanted by the LP (long-play record). It’s been a long time since someone measured work by comparing it to how much an actual horse could power.
But these words still survive, in spite of the fact that the connection to their literal roots has largely disappeared. How should we refer to them?
Well, when we amend a word because of new technology (acoustic guitar, snail mail, wet signature), we call that a retronym. So how about if we call these anachronistic terms anachronyms?
A problem is that anachronym already has some traction with different definitions, though not in any of the major dictionaries. One definition is that it refers to an acronym that’s so established that people no longer know what it stands for: laser, radar, scuba, sonar, BASIC (computer language), USB, ASCII.[1]
The WordSense dictionary says that anachronym is a synonym for backronym, a name that’s made up so that its letters spell out a relevant phrase (DREAM Act, SAD). Someone has proposed that an anachronym refers to a word that has been around a long time, perhaps with a different meaning, such as Dickens using the word google. (This seems like a good time to plug the Allusionist podcast episode about how the name Tiffany has been around for 800 years.)
Still, anachronym is a perfect term for our anachronistic words, and a number of people agree. Among them is the mighty Bryan Garner, who defines anachronym in Garner’s Modern English Usage as “a word that lives on in a figurative sense even though technology or culture or history has rendered its literal sense absurd.”
Even so, I don’t think that the matter is settled. When I was investigating this, I discovered that many people have asked what we should call these words that “live on in a figurative sense.” There have been many suggestions, including these (source, source):
- Linguistic holdovers
- Vestigial words
- Fossilized metaphors
- Semantic relics
- Obsolete allusions (Merriam-Webster)
- Misnomers (Wikipedia)
Still, I love anachronym. My second-favorite candidate term is obsoletonym, suggested by Twitter user EL___editor in a thread about this naming conundrum.
I will observe that even when we recognize that a term is a, um, anachronym, it isn’t necessarily easy to invent a more up-to-date term. One of the threads I was reading reported that a radio host solicited replacements for to dial, as in a phone. The winning entry was digitally initiate audio link, which seems cumbersome until you see its acronym: DIAL.
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
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[1] Yes, I know the difference between an acronym and an initialism. [^]