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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:25:56 -0600
From: Egbert White <eggwhite@earthlink.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Work akin to "anachronism"?
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:25:44 -0800
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On Sun, 8 Feb 2009 23:25:00 -0000, "Alain Dekker"
<abdekker@NOSPAM.fsmail.net> wrote:
>I'm not sure how to ask this question, but you know how you watch a movie
>about, say, the Ancient Eqyptians and one of the characters is wearing a
>wristwatch. There's a word for that faux pas, which is, I think
>"anachronism".
>
>My question is, say you were watching a movie about polar bears and they
>showed you, or talked about, polar bears vaching and eating Emporer
>penguins.
>
>Now polar bears are strictly North Pole and Emporer penguins are strictly
>South Pole. This cannot happen.
>
>What is the term, if there is one, for this, please?
Anachorism.
_The Oxford Companion to the English Language_ gives as an example
tigers in Africa in an Edgar Rice Burroughs story.
Or anatopism. Onelook.com gets some hits on it. For example, with
lots of quotations, <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anatopism>.
The online _Oxford English Dictionary_ calls 'anatopism' rare and has
the following entry for it:
anatopism
rare.
A putting of a thing out of its proper place, a faulty
arrangement.
1812 COLERIDGE Rem. I. 317 In arranging which [books] the
puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid
an anatopism.
1850 DE QUINCEY Wks. XVI. 72 Geographical blunders, or
what might be called anatopisms.
_OED_ has:
anachorism
nonce-wd.
Something out of place in, or foreign to, the country.
1862 LOWELL Bigl. Papers Ser. II. 55 Opinions [that are]
anachronisms and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and
the country.
Interesting to see, both words are formed on Greek roots, and '-top-'
and '-chor-' are both Greek roots meaning 'place' according to the
_OED_ etymologies.
By the way, I would have thought there !were! tigers in Africa, but
some Wikipedia hits say no, not naturally.
--
"How dreary, to be...Somebody! How public, like a frog, to
tell one's name, the live-long June, to an admiring bog!"
<Emily Dickinson>
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