Several years ago I learned a new word: retronym. When the sweep of history or changes in technology result in our using an existing word to describe a newer version of something — the way “phone,” for example, now refers to something very different from the device that Alexander Graham Bell invented — we start using a modified version of that word to describe the thing that it originally described. Thus, “landline phone” is a retronym.
I was immediately enamored of the idea of retronyms and started noticing them everywhere. Someone would use the term “snail mail” or “broadcast TV” and I’d exclaim, “That’s a retronym!” I delighted in discovering new ones and started collecting them.
I haven’t thought about retronyms in a while, but yesterday I was telling my mother about an article I’d read “in the paper,” and she asked, “Do you subscribe to a paper paper?” I smiled — another retronym. When I got home I pulled up my collection and added it to the list, at which point it occurred to me to share the list with you. Here it is:
- Acoustic guitar
- Analog watch
- Bar soap
- Black-and-white television
- Brick-and-mortar store
- Broadcast television
- George H.W. Bush
- Cloth diaper
- Conventional oven
- Dirt road
- Face-to-face meeting
- Film camera
- First wife
- Hardcover book
- Incandescent bulb
- Landline phone
- Leaded gasoline
- Live music
- Mainframe computer
- Manual transmission
- Manual typewriter
- Natural language
- Old Testament
- Optical zoom
- Organic produce
- Original Recipe Chicken
- Hard copy
- Physical book
- Plain M&Ms
- Printed newspaper or paper paper
- Prop plane
- Push lawnmower
- Regular coffee
- Rotary phone
- Silent movie
- Sit-down restaurant
- Snail mail
- Star Trek: The Original Series
- Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
- Static electricity
- Terrestrial radio
- Traditional animation
- Tube TV or CRT TV
- Vinyl record
- Visible light
- Whole milk
- World War I
Of course, additions to the list are welcome.