Sunday, March 26, 2017
Leaping Retronyms!
This isn't quite the same thing as a retronym... it's more like the same word seen from front and back.
Here's an article from QST in 1920, at a time when tubes generating sine waves were still new, and most transmission was still by spark.
Spoiler: Sine waves won the battle almost immediately, and sparks disappeared. The term CW is still actively used, and it still means the same thing BY ITSELF. It still means Morse sent by interrupting a sine wave. But now it 'looks' the other way. The vector of meaning has turned around.
In 1920 CW was the new item, replacing sparks:
Later CW was the old item, mostly replaced by AM:
The distinction between spark (damped wave) and sine (Continuous Wave) is completely forgotten, so C is no longer felt as meaning Continuous. It's just an abbreviation for Morse, now seen in contrast to AM or FM or digital modes.
Seems like we need a new name for this way of shifting.... NO. In fact this is how words changed before the concept of retronyms became common. Connotations and vectors shifted without requiring a new prefix or suffix on the old vector.
My feeling that we need a new name for this concept is an attempt to retronymize an earlier concept that didn't need retronyms.
Meta-retro.
Spoiler: Sine waves won the battle almost immediately, and sparks disappeared. The term CW is still actively used, and it still means the same thing BY ITSELF. It still means Morse sent by interrupting a sine wave. But now it 'looks' the other way. The vector of meaning has turned around.
In 1920 CW was the new item, replacing sparks:
Later CW was the old item, mostly replaced by AM:
The distinction between spark (damped wave) and sine (Continuous Wave) is completely forgotten, so C is no longer felt as meaning Continuous. It's just an abbreviation for Morse, now seen in contrast to AM or FM or digital modes.
Seems like we need a new name for this way of shifting.... NO. In fact this is how words changed before the concept of retronyms became common. Connotations and vectors shifted without requiring a new prefix or suffix on the old vector.
My feeling that we need a new name for this concept is an attempt to retronymize an earlier concept that didn't need retronyms.
Meta-retro.Labels: Language update
¶ 3:45 AM
