retronym

See also: Retronym

English

From retro- +‎ -onym; coined by Frank Mankiewicz[1] and popularized by William Safire.[2][3]

Examples
acoustic guitar dial telephone plain text snail mail film camera book book (reduplicative)

retronym (plural retronyms)

(linguistics) A new word or phrase coined for an old object or concept whose original name has become used for something else or is no longer unique. [from 1980s]
- 1982 December 26, William Safire, “On Language: Watch what you say”, in New York Times‎:
  The phrase is a retronym, the term Frank Mankiewicz has coined to describe names of familiar objects or events that need a modifier to catch up to more modern objects: day baseball and natural turf are in the same category as analog watch.
- 2004, Geoff Nunberg, Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times, →ISBN, page 239:
  You can get a good sense of the pace of change over the past century just by looking at the retronyms we've accumulated. New technologies have forced us to come up with terms like steam locomotive, silent movie [...]

A new coinage for an old concept

Jeremy M. Brosowsky (March 2001), “Frankly Speaking”, in Business Forward‎, archived from the original on 20 September 2002, retrieved November 8, 2017
William Safire (December 26, 1982), “On Language: Watch what you say”, in New York Times‎
William Safire (January 7, 2007), “On Language: Retronym”, in New York Times‎, retrieved November 8, 2017

retronym n (singular definite retronymet, plural indefinite retronymer)

Declension of retronym

retronym c