Презентация на тему Retronemy. History of the term

was invented by Frank Mankiewicz (May 16, 1924 – October

23, 2014), a jouralist, Senator Robert Kennedy’s press secretary and the president of National Public Radio.
He collected this peculiar conbinations of words, and coined a name for them.

Frank Fabian Mankiewicz

the first one to mention this word in print.

It made it’s appearence in his article “On Language” in “The New York Times Magazine” (July 27, 1980).
So William Safire popularized the term and opened it to the public.

A new form of compound word has been created to help old words avoid technological displacement. Consider the word "guitar." In olden times, you could play a Spanish guitar or a Hawaiian guitar, but your instrument was accurately denoted by the single word "guitar." Along came the electric guitar. No longer could you say, "He plays the guitar," for fear of being immediately asked, "What kind — the electric guitar or the old-fashioned guitar?" Since people do not like to be old-fashioned, especially in the music world, players of "regular," or nonelectric, guitars have come to call their instruments "acoustic guitars." Similarly, "natural turf" is the phrase now being used by sportscasters to differentiate that old-fashioned field from "artificial turf." Another word for natural turf is "grass"; we can soon expect all signs to read: "Keep off the natural turf." 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.

An actual extract from the Wiliam Safire’s article,
published in July 27, 1980.

on pages of the 4th edition of “The American
Heritage Dictionary".
The unabridged version of

the dictionary was the first major publication to include the term and, moreover, give its definition.

... - “a word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development.”
“The American
Heritage Dictionary”

numerous articles on this topic in “The New York Times

Magazine”.
He shared with his readers interesting examples of retronymy such as: “skirt suit”, “ free-range chicken”, “white male president”.
He even insisted on using the word in The Times’s crossword puzzle, which sure became a challange for some readers to guess.
He defined retronyms as “nouns that have taken an adjective to stay up to date and to fend off newer terms”.

William Safire

easiest way to understand the term is probably not

reading the definitions and looking up the scarce theory, but taking a good look at examples.

Classic example is an acoustic guitar:

But in 1930s electric guitars appeared, and, in order to tell the two types appart, we started using the term acoustic guitar.

In this case the acoustic guitar is a retronym.

Once guitar was just a guitar.

extremely common and can relate to almost everyone.
Modern

stores can offer you all kings of milk:

Skim milk

All kinds of persent milk

Lactose-free
milk

To distingush the usual milk, we started calling it the whole milk.
It is a retronym.

to express contrast and to defferentiate already existing things

from newer inventions.

Books didn’t need more precise definition, when only paper books existed.

But once E-Books were invented, it triggered development of a contrasting retronym.

we can find quite
curious complications.
Phone
Landline phone
Mobile

phone

Push-button phone

Rotary phone

Keypad phone

Touchscreen phone

This is a retronym

And this is a retronym of the retronym

only the first film of the “Ice Age” franchise,

we could refer to it simply calling in “Ice Age”. But when in 2006 a sequel came out, it became necessary to distinguish the films. Therefore, we need to call it “Ice Age Part I” (and that is a retronym).

Vanilla Minecraft stands for the original version of the game, the one without custom mods.

very common way of creating retronyms.
Regular coffee (caffeine-containing)
Traditional wedding

(white wedding with
a traditional ceremony)

And thanks to health-conscious trends, whole, organic, natural are also popular among “edible” retronyms.

Free-range eggs

Organic plants

Natural juices

the term retronym.
"a neologism created for an existing object

or concept because the exact meaning of the original term used for it has become ambiguous (usually as a result of a new development, technological advance, etc.)."

"a term consisting of a noun and a modifier which specifies the original meaning of the noun."

Merriam-Webster Dictionary once made "retronym" a word of the day.

DEFINITIONS

of the natural progress of history.
Neither of these things

are avoidable, so we need to emrace retronyms and to learn to notice and love them.

Wet signature

Natural grass

Tape recorder

The First World War

Of evolution,

Prehistoric people

of life proves that the sphere functions properly. And

the languge benefits from new collocations.

“...the retronym has become a key to the observation of rapid, profound cultural linguistic change.”

William Safire