What do phrases like ‘Whole Milk’, ‘British English’, ‘Outdoor Rock Climbing’, ‘Manual Typewriter’, and ‘Live Music’ have in common?
They are all called retronyms, and according to this post from Merriam-Webster, they “describe an original after a new version has shown up.” ‘Regular Coffee’ is another example – before the advent of decaffeinated coffee all we had was regular. The post goes on to list a number of others, and we suspect that now you know what they are, you can come up with a few retronyms of your own.
(Thanks, as always, to John Riley of Gabriel Books for providing ATG Quirkies)
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