Retronym facts for kids

A retronym is a new name for something that already exists. This is so that people can tell the older thing apart from the newer one.

For example, the name "acoustic guitar" was made to tell them apart from electric guitars. Before electric guitars, acoustic guitars were just called guitars because there were no other kinds of guitars. Therefore, the name "acoustic guitar" is a retronym for the word guitar.

In pop culture, the 1977 movie Star Wars was renamed Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981, one year after the sequel The Empire Strikes Back came out.

Images for kids

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  This column about "trucks and cars" from Popular Mechanics in 1914 was written when the word truck did not necessarily connote a motor truck and the word car did not necessarily connote a motor car. The same topics today would most likely be talked about with the terms hand trucks and railroad cars. Those terms existed in 1914 as well, but they were not required for clarity, as they would be today.

See also

In Spanish: Retrónimo para niños