Just got back from holiday to read this answer...thanks very much! I shall
try to find a chance to use this term at least once this week! :o) However,
at my work, the use of words like "anatopism" is likely to be one more
example of an anatopism!
Regards,
Alain
"Egbert White" <eggwhite@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:cvq0p4ddrq1cim29k3jrn6em9nrhlaiou8@4ax.com...
> 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,
>
> There's a way to not ask it, and that's to post it separately to more
> than one newsgroup. You posted it under different subject lines to
> ALE and AUE. If you want to post to more than one newsgroup, proper
> netiquette says to crosspost. It saves bandwidth as compared to
> posting separately.
>
>>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?
>
> You've had answers in both newsgroups, 'anatopism' and 'anachorism.'
> The former seems preferable to me, since there are other '-top-' words
> to keep it company ('topography,' 'toponym,' plus many less familiar
> words in which 'top-' means 'place.').
>
> The roots '-top-' and '-chor-' can both mean 'place' in Greek. A
> wild-card search on '*chor*' in a shorter Oxford gets lots of hits,
> but none of them seem to use '-chor-' for 'place.' I wonder if there
> are some that I missed in the long list, or some that the wild-card
> search didn't find.
>
> It seems strange to me that 'anatopism' is rare (as stated in a
> shorter Oxford). I should think it would find about as much use as
> 'anachronism.' This makes me wonder if there's a more common term to
> refer to something that's geographically misplaced, one that hasn't
> surfaced yet in this thread.
>
> Incidentally, it seems worthwhile to mention here 'parachronism,'
> anticipating a time when some reader may be curious to know a term
> that refers to something from an earlier time that's unlikely still to
> occur at the time to which the context refers. It could be thought of
> as the opposite of 'anachronism.' Witch trials in 21st-century Salem
> would be a parachronism. Television in 17th-century Salem would be an
> anachronism.
>
> --
> "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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