retronym
Sign in to saveA retronym is a newer name for something that differentiates it from something else that is newer, similar, or seen in everyday life, thus avoiding confusion between the two.
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- Subclass of
- neologism
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- Trucks and cars in Popular Mechanics 1914 v22 n5 p699.png
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- Commons category
- Retronyms
- topic's main category
- Category:Retronyms
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Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Examples
- See also
- References
A retronym is a newer name for something that differentiates it from something else that is newer, similar, or seen in everyday life, thus avoiding confusion between the two.
== Etymology == The term retronym, a neologism composed of the combining forms retro- (from Latin , "before") + -nym (from Greek , "name"), was coined by Frank Mankiewicz in 1980 and popularized by William Safire in The New York Times Magazine.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “retronym” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.