Misnomer
A misnomer is a term which suggests an interpretation known not to be true. Such terms are sometimes considered incorrect on the assumption that the correct meaning of a term is that suggested by its form or origin.
Some of the sources of misnomers are:
- An older name being retained as the thing named evolved (e.g., pencil lead, tin can, fixed income markets, mince meat pie, steamroller). This is essentially a with the older item standing for anything filling its role. A particular example is transference of a well-known brand name into a generic sense. (Xerox for photo-copy)
- An older name being retained even in the face of newer information (e.g., Chinese checkers, Arabic numerals).
- A name being based on a similarity in a particular aspect (e.g. asteroids look like stars from Earth, the settled portions of Greenland are greener than the rest)
- A difference between popular and technical meanings of a term. For example a koala "bear" (see below) looks and acts much like bears, but from a zoologist's point of view they are quite distinct. Similarly, fireflies fly, ladybugs look and act like bugs and peanuts look and taste like nuts. The technical sense is often cited as the "correct" sense, but this is a matter of context.
- Ambiguity (e.g., a parkway is generally a road with park-like landscaping, not a place to park). Such a term may seem misleading at first blush.
- Association of a thing with a place other than one might assume. For example, Panama hats are made in Ecuador, but came to be associated with the building of the Panama Canal.
- Naming peculiar to the originator's world view.
- An unfamiliar name (generally foreign) or technical term being re-analyzed as something more familiar.
Older name retained
- Fibonacci numbers were originally described by Pingala.
- The May balls and May Bumps (boat race) at Cambridge University no longer take place in May but during "May Week" in June.
- Fixed income markets no longer deal predominantly with fixed (known) payments.
- Fullscreen is a term commonly used for home viewing releases (DVD, VHS, etc.) of theatrical films to differentiate from their widescreen counterpart. Yet, due to the rising popularity of 16:9 HDTV sets, it is, for the most part, the widescreen versions that are technically "fullscreen" (depending on their original aspect ratio.) Plus, most fullscreen versions of modern films, are in fact cut, zoomed, and panned versions of the original widescreen, so while the image fills a 4:3 screen, it is not in fact a "full" picture. The more correct term is "Pan and scan".
- Video filming even when talking about digital video
- The "lead" in pencils is made of graphite and clay, not lead, though the metal lead was originally used for the same purpose.
- Northwestern University is in northeastern Illinois, a midwestern state. Illinois was, however, part of the historical Northwest Territory.
- Tin foil is almost always made of aluminium, whereas tin cans made for the storage of food products are made from steel plated in a thin layer of tin. In both cases, tin was originally used for the same purpose.
- A windmill is a wind turbine whose mechanical output directly drives machinery, for example to mill grain or pump water. The earliest wind turbines were windmills. Most new, large wind turbines generate electricity, and thus are properly called wind generators, but many people call them "windmills."
- The designation Castillian Spanish refers to a standard dialect historically associated with Castille [1]
- Maxwell's equations were created by Oliver Heaviside not by James Clerk Maxwell.
- Clapham Junction is in Battersea (now part of Wandsworth), not Clapham (part of Lambeth); the borough boundaries have changed since the railway came.
Similarity
- An asteroid is not a star-like object as the name suggests, but a smaller object orbiting a star. The name refers to the appearance in a small telescope. A disc is not seen; it appears as a point of light, literally star-like.
- A Guinea pig is neither a pig nor has come from Guinea.
- A lead crystal is not a crystalline solid but an amorphous one—a glass.
- The Nintendo GameCube is not a cube because the sides are not all squares.
- The Hundred Years' War did not last for 100 years but 116. It was actually a series of separate campaigns and battles which continued for 116 years (1337 to 1453).
- The Blitz was the sustained bombing of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941. Although the word Blitz is a shortening of the German word blitzkrieg, meaning "lightning war," it was not an example of blitzkrieg but was an early example of strategic bombing.
- Catgut is made from sheep intestines.
- Podcasting is not limited to the iPod, nor does the technology involve any casting as the consumers pull audio data onto their audio players. However, like broadcasting, it is a way of distributing audio or visual data to large numbers of people.
- Heat lightning is actually lightning that is too far away for the thunder to be heard, but generally occurs during hot weather
- Sugar soap contains neither sugar nor soap.
- American football and Rugby football, unlike Association Football aka Soccer, mostly involves handling the ball rather than kicking it with a foot.
- Smoked glass is so-called because it looks like smoke, not because it's literally kippered. It's actually a type of stained glass.
- Salad cream (a mayonnaise substitute) is so-called because mayonnaise is often (although not exclusively, as implied) used as a salad dressing. Unlike mayonnaise, salad cream isn't particularly creamy.
Difference between common and technical meanings
Ambiguity
Association with place other than one might assume
- Arabic numerals originated in India, though they came to be associated with the Arab world.
- Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus) did not originate in Norway, but from North China.
- Panama hats are made in Ecuador, but are associated with Panama as they were widely worn during construction of the Panama Canal.
- French fries did not originate in France. There are some doubts about their origin, but they most probably were invented in Belgium.
- Hollandaise sauce was created by the French after the manner of a Dutch sauce, but is not itself Dutch in origin.
- Several sports teams play at venues in the metro area they represent, but not in the city proper:
Naming peculiar to the originator's world view
- The tremolo arm on guitars is used to produce vibrato; not tremolo. Conversely, a vibrato unit produces tremolo, not vibrato. Both terms are due to electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender.
- Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America, even though people have been living in the Americas for thousands of years
- As European explorers mistook the Americas for India, the native peoples were called Indians. Similarly, the West Indies were so called after India. Ironically, the term "Native American" is not only just as wrong as "American Indian", it is wrong in the same way; the latter term implies that the people descended from the original population of the Americas were born elsewhere, the former term implies that they are the only inhabitants who weren't.
- Newfoundland was considered newly found by those who so named it, but had first been inhabited at least 5,000 years before.
- Greenland is mostly Arctic and Iceland is mostly tundra (the settled portions of Greenland are green).
- Chinese checkers did not originate in China (or even Asia). The name was meant to sound more exotic to American ears .
- India ink is made in China
- Anti-Semitism is prejudice against Jews, not all Semites.
- Decimal is the name of the base-ten number system (it's the Latin for "by tens", the adjective form of the noun decem "ten"); it does not, as many people suppose, solely mean "fractional" -- on the contrary, the base-ten system was called "decimal" for hundreds of years before the so-called "decimal fraction" notation was invented. "Decimal fraction" notation works in any number base (not just base-ten); old computer manuals, from the time when low-level programming of floating-point routines was far more common than it is today, often speak of "binary fractions".
Reanalysis
- English horn refers to an alto oboe with an angled mouthpiece. "English" simply mistranslates the French for "angled"; "horn" would seem to indicate a brass instrument rather than a woodwind.
- Despite its name, the Jerusalem artichoke has no relation to Jerusalem, and little to do with artichokes. Jerusalem derives from Girasole, the Italian word for sunflower, by folk etymology. The taste of the tuber of a Jerusalem artichoke merely resembles the taste of the leaves of the Globe Artichoke.
- Guinea pigs do not come from Guinea (they are also not pigs). The "Guinea" may be a re-analysis of "Guyana".
- In logic, begging the question is a type of fallacy occurring in deductive reasoning in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. However, more recently, "begs the question" has been used as a synonym for "raises the question".
- A quantum leap is properly an instantaneous change, which may be either large or small. In physics, it is the smallest possible changes that are of particular interest. In vernacular usage, however, the term is often taken to imply an abrupt large change.
- In common usage, a "steep" learning curve implies a difficult learning problem; but on the actual learning curve graph, a steep curve describes a rapid reduction in production cost per unit produced, indicating rapid (easy) learning by the production staff.
- English-speakers frequently ask "why are hamburgers called that when the meat content is beef?"; this is a false analysis (ham–burger; the correct analysis is hamburg–er) resulting from failure to realise that this word is German in origin, and derives from the custom in German-speaking countries of naming snack foods after the town with which they are most closely associated. The presence of the English word "ham" is coincidental.
- History derives from the Greek histrios "saga"; it has no connection with the English phrase "his story", and folk etymologies which claim that it does are instances of false analysis.
Other
- Dry cleaning immerses clothes in liquid solvents, but does not involve water.
- The Quad damage power-up on the game Quake III Arena only triples the damage.
- Despite the name, a magpie is not a pie or even a dessert. It is a type of bird.
- A radiator doesn't radiate; it works by convection.
- Some band names seem to refer to the bandleader when they actually don't.
- Darius Rucker from the band Hootie and the Blowfish is often referred to as "Hootie".
- Debbie Harry from the band Blondie is often called "Blondie" (she is blond).
- Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is often thought to be Jethro Tull.
- The band Steely Dan has never featured a member named "Dan."
- "Echo" is not a stage name for Echo and the Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch.
- Voltaire observed that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
- The Oktoberfest beer festival actually begins in September and ends in October.
Citations
- [1] http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2133%28195205%2935%3A2%3C203%3ASMIST%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J&size=LARGE