tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 06 12:54:24 2010
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Re: latlh mu' chu'
- From: "lojmIt tI'wI' nuv" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: latlh mu' chu'
- Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 15:53:12 -0500
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While it is not exactly what you are looking for, the word "retronym" comes to mind. The classic example is "analog watch", which was not a term used at all before the advent of the "digital watch". Before that, the thing on your wrist with hands that moved around and told you what time it is was just called a watch.
But there are many examples, like going to see a film (even if it is digital), or tape recording a meeting (even if it's a digital recording), or "riding shotgun" in a car (even though that's a term from horse-drawn stage coaches), or when you say that it's "eleven o'clock", which is a term invented to differentiate time determined by looking at the Sun vs. time determined by looking at a clock (when clocks were new and rare), or when you say that you "wipe a hard drive" (the word wipe meant a lot of things before hard drives were invented, but erasing magnetic information was not on the list for the majority of the history of the use of the word "wipe"). Ditto for "calling" someone on a phone. "Call" was something you did across a field to get someone's attention. For that matter, there's "hello", which was also something you called across a field to get someone's attention. And "going postal" has had a bit of new meaning applied to it, as has "walking the Appalachian Trail".
Nothing else we do requires as much rote memorization as language. The links between words and meaning are remarkably plastic, limited only by the mutually memorized context of the speakers and listeners, writers and readers.
There are probably less than a dozen people in the world who know the meaning of the paired sentences, "We can't do popcorn. The chickens are too short." I feel confident that no one that I have not met is among those who know it. Of course, if I explain it here, that will no longer be true.
So I won't.
bIloychugh, bItIvjaj.
pItlh.
lojmIt tI'wI' nuv
On Dec 6, 2010, at 3:28 PM, Felix Malmenbeck wrote:
> ghItlhta' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>> All computer storage DISKS are disk shaped, though there are DRIVES
>> that are not disk shaped, like the Solid State Hard Drives (SSHD) that
>> come with the current models of MacBook Air, or like the USB FLASH
>> drives many of us carry around. We talk about hard disks and hard
>> drives interchangeably.
>
> Ah, alright. I think I was confused because in Sweden, the word hårddisk is often used to describe any kind of drive, including "SSD-hårddiskar" (also called "Solid State-hårddiskar") and sometimes "FLASH-hårddiskar".
>
> Is there a good word for words that have grown to mean something other than their original, literal meanings due to everyday use?
>
>